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Book,.. ] T . ' 3 5 .. "X ud 


Copyright)! 0 ‘ 

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 


4 









* 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 

BY 

TWENTY AND THREE AUTHORS 



D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 
NEW YORK *• *■ MCMXXIV 



COPYRIGHT, 1924, BY 

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 



©C1AS0S697 



PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OP AMERICA 


CONTENTS 


Kerfol .Edith Wharton 

The Chink and the Child . Thomas Burke 

The Nomad .Robert Hichens 

The Crucifixion of the Outcast W. B. Yeats 
The Drums of Kairwan 

The Marquess Curzon of Kedleston 
A Life—a Bowl of Rice ... L. De Bra 

Hodge .Elinor Mordaunt 

Hatteras .A. W. Mason 

The Ransom . Cutliffe Hyne 

The Other Twin .Edwin Pugh 

The Narrow Way . . . R. Ellis Roberts 

Davy Jones’s Gift .... John Masefield 

The Call of the Hand . . Louis Golding 

The Sentimental Mortgage . Arthur Lynch 
Captain Sharkey .... A. Conan Doyle 

Violence .Algernon Blackwood 

The Reward of Enterprise . . Ward Muir 

Grear’s Dam . Morley Roberts 

The King of Maleka . H. De Vere Stacpoole 

Alleluia .T. F. Powys 

The Monkey's Paw ... W. W. Jacobs 
The Creatures .... Walter de la Mare 
The Taipan . . . . W. Somerset Maugham 


PAGE 

I 

32 

48 

74 

84 

95 

102 

131 

161 

176 

184 

205 

210 

229 

236 

253 

263 

272 

285 

305 

3 ii 

326 

34i 

















N 



















KERFOL 

By EDITH WHARTON 


I 

“VTOU ought to buy it,” said my host; “it’s just the 
place for a solitary-minded devil like you. And it 
would be rather worth while to own the most 
romantic house in Brittany. The present people are dead 
broke, and it’s going for a song—you ought to buy it.” 

It was not with the least idea of living up to the char¬ 
acter my friend Lanrivain ascribed to me (as a matter 
of fact, under my unsociable exterior I have always had 
secret yearnings for domesticity) that I took his hint one 
autumn afternoon and went to Kerfol. My friend was 
motoring over to Quimper on business: he dropped me on 
the way, at a cross-road on a heath, and said: “First turn 
to the right and second to the left. Then straight ahead 
till you see an avenue. If you meet any peasants, don’t 
ask your way. They don’t understand French, and they 
would pretend they did and mix you up. I’ll be back 
for you here by sunset—and don’t forget the tombs in 
the chapel.” 

I followed Lanrivain’s directions with the hesitation oc¬ 
casioned by the usual difficulty of remembering whether 
he had said the first turn to the right and second to the 
left, or the contrary. If I had met a peasant I should 
certainly have asked, and probably been sent astray; but 

From Xingu and Other Stories, by Edith Wharton. Copyright, 
1917, by Charles Scribner’s Sons. 

I 



TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


I had the desert landscape to myself, and so stumbled on 
the right turn and walked across the heath till I came to 
an avenue. It was so unlike any other avenue I have 
ever seen that I instantly knew it must be the avenue. The 
grey-trunked trees sprang up straight to a great height and 
then interwove their pale-grey branches in a long tunnel 
through which the autumn light fell faintly. I know most 
trees by name, but I haven’t to this day been able to decide 
what those trees were. They had the tall curve of elms, 
the tenuity of poplars, the ashen colour of olives under a 
rainy sky; and they stretched ahead of me for half a mile 
or more without a break in their arch. If ever I saw an 
avenue that unmistakably led to something, it was the 
avenue at Kerfol. My heart beat a little as I began to 
walk down it. 

Presently the trees ended and I came to a fortified gate 
in a long wall. Between me and the wall was an open 
space of grass, with other grey avenues radiating from 
it. Behind the wall were tall slate roofs mossed with sil¬ 
ver, a chapel belfry, the top of a keep. A moat filled with 
wild shrubs and brambles surrounded the place; the draw¬ 
bridge had been replaced by a stone arch, and the port¬ 
cullis by an iron gate. I stood for a long time on the 
hither side of the moat, gazing about me, and letting the 
influence of the place sink in. I said to myself: “If I 
wait long enough, the guardian will turn up and show me 
the tombs—” and I rather hoped he wouldn’t turn up too 
soon. 

I sat down on a stone and lit a cigarette. As soon as 
I had done it, it struck me as a puerile and portentous 
thing to do, with that great blind house looking down 
at me, and all the empty avenues converging on me. It 


2 


KERFOL 


may have been the depth of the silence that made me so 
conscious of my gesture. The squeak of my match 
sounded as loud as the scraping of a brake, and I almost 
fancied I heard it fall when I tossed it onto the grass. But 
there was more than that: a sense of irrelevance, of little¬ 
ness, of futile bravado, in sitting there puffing my cigar¬ 
ette-smoke into the face of such a past. 

I knew nothing of the history of Kerfol—I was new 
to Brittany, and Lanrivain had never mentioned the name 
to me till the day before—but one couldn’t as much as 
glance at that pile without feeling in it a long accumulation 
of history. What kind of history I was not prepared to 
guess: perhaps only that sheer weight of many associated 
lives and deaths which gives a majesty to all old houses. 
But the aspect of Kerfol suggested something more a 
perspective of stern and cruel memories stretching away, 
like its own grey avenues, into a blur of darkness. 

Certainly no house had ever more completely and 
finally broken with the present. As it stood there, lifting 
its proud roofs and gables to the sky, it might have been 
its own funeral monument. “Tombs in the chapel? The 
whole place is a tomb!” I reflected. I hoped more and 
more that the guardian would not come. The details of 
the place, however striking, would seem trivial compared 
with its collective impressiveness; and I wanted only to 
sit there and be penetrated by the weight of its silence. 

“It’s the very place for you!” Lanrivain had said; and 
I was overcome by the almost blasphemous frivolity of 
suggesting to any living being that Kerfol was the place 
for him. “Is it possible that any one could not see—?” 
I wondered. I did not finish the thought: what I meant 
was undefinable. I stood up and wandered toward the 
3 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


gate. I was beginning to want to know more; not to see 
more—I was by now so sure it was not a question of 
seeing—but to feel more: feel all the place had to com¬ 
municate. “But to get in one will have to rout out the 
keeper,” I thought reluctantly, and hesitated. Finally I 
crossed the bridge and tried the iron gate. It yielded, and 
I walked through the tunnel formed by the thickness of 
the chemin de ronde. At the farther end, a wooden bar¬ 
ricade had been laid across the entrance, and beyond it was 
a court enclosed in noble architecture. The main build¬ 
ing faced me; and I now saw that one half was a mere 
ruined front, with gaping windows through which the 
wild growths of the moat and the trees of the park were 
visible. The rest of the house was still in its robust beauty. 
One end abutted on the round tower, the other on the 
small traceried chapel, and in an angle of the building 
stood a graceful well-head crowned with mossy urns. A 
few roses grew against the walls, and on an upper window¬ 
sill I remember noticing a pot of fuchsias. 

My sense of the pressure of the invisible began to yield 
to my architectural interest. The building was so fine 
that I felt a desire to explore it for its own sake. I 
looked about the court, wondering in which corner the 
guardian lodged. Then I pushed open the barrier and 
went in. As I did so, a dog barred my way. He was 
such a remarkably beautiful little dog that for a moment 
he made me forget the splendid place he was defending. 

I was not sure of his breed at the time, but have since 
learned that it was Chinese, and that he was of a rare 
variety called the “Sleeve-dog.” He was very small 
and golden brown, with large brown eyes and a ruffled 
throat: he looked like a large tawny chrysanthemum. I 

4 


KERFOL 


said to myself: “These little beasts always snap and 
scream, and somebody will be out in a minute.” 

The little animal stood before me, forbidding, almost 
menacing; there was anger in his large brown eyes. But 
he made no sound, he came no nearer. Instead, as I 
advanced, he gradually fell back, and I noticed that an¬ 
other dog, a vague rough brindled thing, had limped up 
on a lame leg. “There’ll be a hubbub now,” I thought; 
for at the same moment a third dog, a long-haired white 
mongrel, slipped out of a doorway and joined the others. 
All three stood looking at me with grave eyes; but not 
a sound came from them. As I advanced they continued 
to fall back on muffled paws, still watching me. “At a 
given point, they’ll all charge at my ankles: it’s one of 
the jokes that dogs who live together put on one,” 
I thought. I was not alarmed, for they were neither large 
nor formidable. But they let me wander about the 
court as I pleased, following me at a little distance— 
always the same distance—and always keeping their eyes 
on me. Presently I looked across at the ruined faQade, 
and saw that in one of its empty window-frames another 
dog stood: a white pointer with one brown ear. He was 
an old grave dog, much more experienced than the others; 
and he seemed to be observing me with a deeper intent¬ 
ness. 

“I’ll hear from him I said to myself; but he stood in 
the window-frame, against the trees of the park, and 
continued to watch me without moving. I stared back 
at him for a time, to see if the sense that he was being 
watched would not rouse him. Half the width of the 
court lay between us, and we gazed at each other silently 
across it. But he did not stir, and at last I turned away. 
5 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


Behind me I found the rest of the pack, with a new¬ 
comer added: a small black greyhound with pale agate- 
coloured eyes. He was shivering a little, and his ex¬ 
pression was more timid than that of the others. I 
noticed that he kept a little behind them. And still there 
was not a sound. 

I stood there for fully five minutes, the circle about me 
—waiting, as they seemed to be waiting. At last I went 
up to the little golden-brown dog and stooped to pat him. 
As I did so, I heard myself give a nervous laugh. The 
little dog did not start, or growl, or take his eyes from 
me—he simply slipped back about a yard, and then 
paused and continued to look at me. “Oh, hang it!” 
I exclaimed, and walked across the court toward the 
well. 

As I advanced, the dogs separated and slid away into 
different corners of the court. I examined the unis on 
the well, tried a locked door or two, and looked up and 
down the dumb faqade: then I faced about toward the 
chapel. When I turned I perceived that all the dogs had 
disappeared except the old pointer, who still watched 
me from the window. It was rather a relief to be rid of 
that cloud of witnesses; and I began to look about me for 
a way to the back of the house. “Perhaps there’ll be 
somebody in the garden,” I thought. I found a way 
across the moat, scrambled over a wall smothered in 
brambles, and got into the garden. A few lean hy¬ 
drangeas and geraniums pined in the flower-beds, and 
the ancient house looked down on them indifferently. 
Its garden side was plainer and severer than the other: 
the long granite front, with its few windows and steep 
roof, looked like a fortress-prison. I walked around the 
6 


KERFOL 


farther wing, went up some disjointed steps, and en¬ 
tered the deep twilight of a narrow and incredibly old 
box-walk. The walk was just wide enough for one 
person to slip through, and its branches met overhead. 
It was like the ghost of a box-walk, its lustrous green 
all turning to the shadowy greyness of the avenues. I 
walked on and on, the branches hitting me in the face 
and springing back with a dry rattle; and at length I came 
out on the grassy top of the chemin de ronde. I walked 
along it to the gate-tower, looking down into the court, 
which was just below me. Not a human being was in 
sight; and neither were the dogs. I found a flight of 
steps in the thickness of the wall and went down them; 
and when I emerged again into the court, there stood the 
circle of dogs, the golden-brown one a little ahead of 
the others, the black greyhound shivering in the rear. 

“Oh, hang it—you uncomfortable beasts, you!” I ex¬ 
claimed, my voice startling me with a sudden echo. The 
dogs stood motionless, watching me. I knew by this 
time that they would not try to prevent my approaching 
the house, and the knowledge left me free to examine 
them. I had a feeling that they must be horribly cowed 
to be so silent and inert. Yet they did not look hungry 
or ill-treated. Their coats were smooth and they were 
not thin, except the shivering greyhound. It was more 
as if they had lived a long time with people who never 
spoke to them or looked at them: as though the silence 
of the place had gradually benumbed their busy, in¬ 
quisitive natures. And this strange passivity, this almost 
human lassitude, seemed to me sadder than the misery of 
starved and beaten animals. I should have liked to rouse 
them for a minute, to coax them into a game or a scamper ; 

7 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


but the longer I looked into their fixed and weary eyes 
the more preposterous the idea became. With the win¬ 
dows of that house looking down on us, how could I 
have imagined such a thing? The dogs knew better: 
they knew what the house would tolerate and what it 
would not. I even fancied that they knew what was 
passing through my mind, and pitied me for my frivolity. 
But even that feeling probably reached them through a 
thick fog of listlessness. I had an idea that their dis¬ 
tance from me was as nothing to my remoteness from 
them. The impression they produced was that of having 
in common one memory so deep and dark that nothing 
that had happened since was worth either a growl or 
a wag. 

“I say/’ I broke out abruptly, addressing myself to 
the dumb circle, “do you know what you look like, the 
whole lot of you? You look as if you’d seen a ghost— 
that’s how you look. I wonder if there is a ghost here, 
and nobody but you left for it to appear to?” The dogs 
continued to gaze at me without moving. . . . 

It was dark when I saw Lanrivain’s motor lamps at 
the cross-roads—and I wasn’t exactly sorry to see them. 
I had the sense of having escaped from the loneliest place 
in the whole world, and of not liking loneliness—to that 
degree—as much as I had imagined I should. My friend 
had brought his solicitor back from Quimper for the 
night, and seated beside a fat and affable stranger I felt 
no inclination to talk of Kerfol. . . . 

But that evening, when Lanrivain and the solicitor 
were closeted in the study, Madame de Lanrivain began 
to question me in the drawing-room. 

8 


KERFOL 


“Well—are you going to buy Kerfol?” she asked, tilt¬ 
ing up her gay chin from her embroidery. 

“I haven’t decided yet. The fact is, I couldn’t get 
into the house,” I said, as if I had simply postponed my 
decision, and meant to go back for another look. 

“You couldn’t get in? Why, what happened? The 
family are mad to sell the place, and the old guardian 
has orders-” 

“Very likely. But the old guardian wasn’t there.” 

“What a pity. He must have gone to market. But 
his daughter-?” 

“There was nobody about. At least I saw no one.” 

“How extraordinary! Literally nobody?” 

“Nobody but a lot of dogs—a whole pack of them— 
who seemed to have the place to themselves.” 

Madame de Lanrivain let the embroidery slip to her 
knees, and folded her hands on it. For several minutes 
she looked at me thoughtfully. 

“A pack of dogs—you saw them?” 

“Saw them ? I saw nothing else!” 

“How many?” She dropped her voice a little. “I’ve 
always wondered-” 

I looked at her with surprise : I had supposed the 
place to be familiar to her. “Have you never been to 
Kerfol?” I asked. 

“Oh, yes; often. But never on that day.” 

“What day?” 

“I’d quite forgotten, and so had Herve, I’m sure. If 
we’d remembered, we never should have sent you to-day 
—but then, after all, one doesn’t half believe that sort 
of thing, does one?” 

“What sort of thing?” I asked, involuntarily sinking 

9 





TWENTY-THREE STORIES 

my voice to the level of hers. Inwardly I was thinking: 
“I knew there was something. . . 

Madame de Lanrivain cleared her throat and produced 
a reassuring smile. '‘Didn’t Herve tell you the story of 
Kerfol? An ancestor of his was mixed up in it. You 
know every Breton house has its ghost-story; and some 
of them are rather unpleasant.” 

“Yes—but those dogs?” 

“Well, those dogs are the ghosts of Kerfol. At least, 
the peasants say there’s one day in the year when a lot 
of dogs appear there; and that day the keeper and his 
daughter go off to Morlaix and get drunk. The women in 
Brittany drink dreadfully.” She stooped to match a silk; 
then she lifted her charming, inquisitive Parisian face. 
“Did you really see a lot of dogs? There isn’t one at 
Kerfol,” she said. 


2 

Lanrivain, the next day, hunted out a shabby calf 
volume from the back of an upper shelf of his library. 

“Yes—here it is. What does it call itself? A History 
of the Assises of the Duchy of Brittany. Quimper , 1702. 
The book was written about a hundred years later than 
the Kerfol affair; but I believe the account is transcribed 
pretty literally from the judicial records. Anyhow, it’s 
queer reading. And there’s a Herve de Lanrivain mixed 
up in it—not exactly my style, as you’ll see. But then 
he’s only a collateral. Here, take the book up to bed with 
you. I don’t exactly remember the details; but after 
you’ve read it, I’ll bet anything you’ll leave your light 
burning all night!” 


10 


KERFOL 


I left my light burning all night, as he had predicted; 
but it was chiefly because, till near dawn, I was absorbed 
in my reading. The account of the trial of Anne de 
Cornault, wife of the lord of Kerfol, was long and closely 
printed. It was, as my friend had said, probably an 
almost literal transcription of what took place in the 
court-room; and the trial lasted nearly a month. Besides, 
the type of the book was very bad. . . . 

At first I thought of translating the old record. But 
it is full of wearisome repetitions, and the main lines of 
the story are forever straying off into side issues. So I 
have tried to disentangle it, and give it here in a simpler 
form. At times, however, I have reverted to the text 
because no other words could have conveyed so exactly 
the sense of what I felt at Kerfol; and nowhere have I 
added anything of my own. 


3 

It was in the year 16— that Yves de Cornault, lord of 
the domain of Kerfol, went to the pardon of Locronan to 
perform his religious duties. He w^as a rich and powerful 
noble, then in his sixty-second year, but hale and sturdy, 
a great horseman and hunter and a pious man. So all 
his neighbours attested. In appearance he was short and 
broad, with a swarthy face, legs slightly bowed from the 
saddle, a hanging nose and broad hands with black hairs 
on them. He had married young and lost his wife and 
son soon after, and since then had lived alone at Kerfol. 
Twice a year he went to Morlaix, where he had a hand¬ 
some house by the river, and spent a week or ten days 
there; and occasionally he rode to Rennes on business. 

II 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


Witnesses were found to declare that during these ab¬ 
sences he led a life different from the one he was known 
to lead at Kerfol, where he busied himself with his estate, 
attended mass daily, and found his only amusement in 
hunting the wild boar and water-fowl. But these 
rumours are not particularly relevant, and it is certain 
that among people of his own class in the neighbourhood 
he passed for a stern and even austere man, observant of 
his religious obligations, and keeping strictly to himself. 
There was no talk of any familiarity with the women 
on his estate, though at that time the nobility were very 
free with their peasants. Some people said he had never 
looked at a woman since his wife’s death; but such things 
are hard to prove, and the evidence on this point was not 
worth much. 

Well, in his sixty-second year, Yves de Cornault went 
to the pardon at Locronan, and saw there a young lady of 
Douarnenez, who had ridden over pillion behind her father 
to do her duty to the saint. Her name was Anne de 
Barrigan, and she came of good old Breton stock, but 
much less great and powerful than that of Yves de 
Cornault; and her father had squandered his fortune at 
cards, and lived almost like a peasant in his little granite 
manor on the moors. ... I have said I would add noth¬ 
ing of my own to this bald statement of a strange case; 
but I must interrupt myself here to describe the young 
lady who rode up to the lych-gate of Locronan at the 
very moment when the Baron de Cornault was also dis¬ 
mounting there. I take my description from a faded 
drawing in red crayon, sober and truthful enough to be 
by a late pupil of the Clouets, which hangs in Lanrivain’s 
study, and is said to be a portrait of Anne de Barrigan. 

12 


KERFOL 


It is unsigned and has no mark of identity but the 
initials A. B., and the date 16—, the year after her 
marriage. It represents a young woman with a small oval 
face, almost pointed, yet wide enough for a full mouth 
with a tender depression at the corners. The nose is 
small, and the eyebrows are set rather high, far apart, 
and as lightly pencilled as the eyebrows in a Chinese 
painting. The forehead is high and serious, and the hair, 
which one feels to be fine and thick and fair, is drawn off 
it and lies close like a cap. The eyes are neither large nor 
small, hazel probably, with a look at once shy and steady. 
A pair of beautiful long hands are crossed below the 
lady’s breast. . . . 

The chaplain of Kerfol, and other witnesses, averred 
that when the Baron came back from Locronan he jumped 
from his horse, ordered another to be instantly saddled, 
called to a young page to come with him, and rode away 
that same evening to the south. His steward followed 
the next morning with coffers laden on a pair of pack 
mules. The following week Yves de Cornault rode back 
to Kerfol, sent for his vassals and tenants, and told them 
he was to be married at All Saints to Anne de Barrigan 
of Douarnenez. And on All Saints’ Day the marriage 
took place. 

As to the next few years, the evidence on both sides 
seems to show that they passed happily for the couple. 
No one was found to say that Yves de Cornault had 
been unkind to his wife, and it was plain to all that he 
was content with his bargain. Indeed, it was admitted 
by the chaplain and other witnesses for the prosecution 
that the young lady had a softening influence on her hus¬ 
band, snd that he became less exacting with his tenants, 
13 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 

less harsh to peasants and dependents, and less subject 
to the fits of gloomy silence which had darkened his 
widowhood. As to his wife, the only grievance her 
champions could call up in her behalf was that Kerfol was 
a lonely place, and that when her husband was away on 
business at Rennes or Morlaix—whither she was never 
taken—she was not allowed so much as to walk in the 
park unaccompanied. But no one asserted that she was 
unhappy, though one servant-woman said she had sur¬ 
prised her crying, and had heard her say that she was a 
woman accursed to have no child, and nothing in life to 
call her own. But that was a natural enough feeling in 
a wife attached to her husband; and certainly it must 
have been a great grief to Yves de Cornault that she bore 
no son. Yet he never made her feel her childlessness as 
a reproach—she admits this in her evidence—but seemed 
to try to make her forget it by showering gifts and favours 
on her. Rich though he was, he had never been open- 
handed; but nothing was too fine for his wife, in the way 
of silks or gems or linen, or whatever else she fancied. 
Every wandering merchant was welcome at Kerfol, and 
when the master was called away he never came back with¬ 
out bringing his wife a handsome present—something 
curious and particular—from Morlaix or Rennes or 
Quimper. One of the waiting-women gave, in cross- 
examination, an interesting list of one year’s gifts, which 
I copy. From Morlaix, a carved ivory junk, with China¬ 
men at the oars, that a strange sailor had brought back 
as a votive offering for Notre Dame de la Clarte, above 
Ploumanac’h; from Quimper, an embroidered gown, 
worked by the nuns of the Assumption; from Rennes, 
a silver rose that opened and showed an amber Virgin 
14 


KERFOL 


with a crown of garnets; from Morlaix, again, a length 
of Damascus velvet shot with gold, bought of a Jew 
from Syria; and for Michaelmas that same year, from 
Rennes, a necklet or bracelet of round stones—emeralds 
and pearls and rubies—strung like beads on a fine gold 
chain. This was the present that pleased the lady best, 
the woman said. Later on, as it happened, it was produced 
at the trial, and appears to have struck the Judges and 
the public as a curious and valuable jewel. 

The very same winter, the Baron absented himself 
again, this time as far as Bordeaux, and on his return he 
brought his wife something even odder knd prettier 
than the bracelet. It was a winter evening when he rode 
up to Kerfol, and, walking into the hall, found her sitting 
by the hearth, her chin on her hand, looking into the fire. 
He carried a velvet box in his hand and, setting it down, 
lifted the lid and let out a little golden-brown dog. 

Anne de Cornault exclaimed with pleasure as the little 
creature bounded toward her. “Oh, it looks like a bird 
or a butterfly!” she cried as she picked it up; and the 
dog put its paws on her shoulders and looked at her with 
eyes “like a Christian’s.” After that she would never 
have it out of her sight, and petted and talked to it as 
if it had been a child—as indeed it was the nearest thing 
to a child she was to know. Yves de Cornault was much 
pleased with his purchase. The dog had been brought 
to him by a sailor from an East Indian merchantman, 
and the sailor had bought it of a pilgrim in a bazaar at 
Jaffa, who had stolen it from a nobleman’s wife in China: 
a perfectly permissible thing to do, since the pilgrim was 
a Christian and the nobleman a heathen doomed to hell- 
fire. Yves de Cornault had paid a long price for the dog, 
15 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 

for they were beginning to be in demand at the French 
court, and the sailor knew he had got hold of a good 
thing; but Anne’s pleasure was so great that, to see her 
laugh and play with the little animal, her husband would 
doubtless have given twice the sum. 

So far all the evidence is at one, and the narrative 
plain sailing; but now the steering becomes difficult. I 
will try to keep as nearly as possible to Anne’s own state¬ 
ments; though toward the end, poor thing. . . . 

Well, to go back. The very year after the little brown 
dog was brought to Kerfol, Yves de Cornault, one winter 
night, was found dead at the head of a narrow flight of 
stairs leading down from his wife’s rooms to a door 
opening on the court. It was his wife who found him 
and gave the alarm, so distracted, poor wretch, with fear 
and horror—for his blood was all over her—that at first 
the roused household could not make out what she was 
saying, and thought she had suddenly gone mad. But 
there, sure enough, at the top of the stairs lay her hus¬ 
band, stone dead, and head foremost, the blood from 
his wounds dripping down to the step below him. He 
had been dreadfully scratched and gashed about the face 
and throat, as if with curious pointed weapons; and one 
of his legs had a deep tear in it which had cut an artery, 
and probably caused his death. But how did he come 
there, and who had murdered him? 

His wife declared that she had been asleep in her bed, 
and hearing his cry had rushed out to find him lying on 
the stairs; but this was immediately questioned. In the 
first place, it was proved that from her room she could 
not have heard the struggle on the stairs, owing to the 
thickness of the walls and the length of the intervening 
16 


KERFOL 


passage; then it was evident that she had not been in 
bed and asleep, since she was dressed when she roused 
the house, and her bed had not been slept in. Moreover, 
the door at the bottom of the stairs was ajar, and it was 
noticed by the chaplain (an observant man) that the dress 
she wore was stained with blood about the knees, and that 
there were traces of small blood-stained hands low down 
on the staircase walls, so that it was conjectured that she 
had really been at the postern-door when her husband 
fell and, feeling her way up to him in the darkness on 
her hands and knees, had been stained by his blood drip¬ 
ping down on her. Of course it was argued on the other 
side that the blood-marks on her dress might have been 
caused by her kneeling down by her husband when she 
rushed out of her room; but there was the open door 
below, and the fact that the finger-marks in the staircase 
all pointed upward. 

The accused held to her statement for the first two days, 
in spite of its improbability; but on the third day word 
was brought to her that Herve de Lanrivain, a young 
nobleman of the neighbourhood, had been arrested for 
complicity in the crime. Two or three witnesses there¬ 
upon came forward to say that it was known throughout 
the country that Lanrivain had formerly been on good 
terms with the lady of Comault; but that he had been 
absent from Brittany for over a year, and people had 
ceased to associate their names. The witnesses who made 
this statement were not of a very reputable sort. One 
was an old herb-gatherer suspected of witchcraft, another 
a drunken clerk from a neighbouring parish, the third a 
half-witted shepherd who could be made to say any¬ 
thing ; and it was clear that the prosecution was not satis- 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 

fied with its case, and would have liked to find more 
proof of Lanrivain’s complicity than the statement of the 
herb-gatherer, who swore to having seen him climbing 
the wall of the park on the night of the murder. One 
way of patching out incomplete proofs in those days was 
to put some sort of pressure, moral or physical, on the 
accused person. It is not clear what pressure was put on 
Anne de Cornault; but on the third day, when she was 
brought in court, she “appeared weak and wandering,” 
and after being encouraged to collect herself and speak 
the truth, on her honour and the wounds of her Blessed 
Redeemer, she confessed that she had in fact gone down 
the stairs to speak with Herve de Lanrivain (who denied 
everything), and had been surprised there by the sound 
of her husband’s fall. That was better; and the prosecu¬ 
tion rubbed its hands with satisfaction. The satisfaction 
increased when various dependents living at Kerfol were 
induced to say—with apparent sincerity—that during the 
year or two preceding his death their master had once 
more grown uncertain and irascible, and subject to the 
fits of brooding silence which his household had learned 
to dread before his second marriage. This seemed to 
show that things had not been going well at Kerfol; 
though no one could be found to say that there had been 
any signs of open disagreement between husband and 
wife. 

Anne de Cornault, when questioned as to her reason 
for going down at night to open the door to Herve de 
Lanrivain, made an answer which must have sent a 
smile around the court. She said it was because she was 
lonely and wanted to talk with the young man. Was this 
the only reason? she was asked; and replied: “Yes, by 
18 


KERFOL 


the Cross over your Lordships’ heads.” “But why at 
midnight?” the court asked. “Because I could see him 
in no other way.” I can see the exchange of glances 
across the ermine collars under the Crucifix. 

Anne de Cornault, further questioned, said that her 
married life had been extremely lonely: “desolate” was 
the word she used. It was true that her husband seldom 
spoke harshly to her; but there were days when he did 
not speak at all. It was true that he had never struck or 
threatened her; but he kept her like a prisoner at Kerfol, 
and when he rode away to Morlaix or Quimper or Rennes 
he set so close a watch on her that she could not pick a 
flower in the garden without having a waiting-woman at 
her heels. “I am no Queen, to need such honours,” she 
once said to him; and he had answered that a man who 
has a treasure does not leave the key in the lock when 
he goes out. “Then take me with you,” she urged; but 
to this he said that towns were pernicious places, and 
young wives better off at their firesides. 

“But what did you want to say to Herve de Lanrivain?” 
the court asked; and she answered: “To ask him to 
take me away.” 

“Ah—you confess that you went down to him with 
adulterous thoughts?” 

“No.” 

“Then why did you want him to take you away?” 

“Because I was afraid for my life.” 

“Of whom were you afraid?” 

“Of my husband.” 

“Why were you afraid of your husband?” 

“Because he had strangled my little dog.” 

Another smile must have passed around the court- 
19 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


room: in days when any nobleman had a right to hang 
his peasants—and most of them exercised it—pinching 
a pet animal’s wind-pipe was nothing to make a fuss 
about. 

At this point one of the Judges, who appears to have 
had a certain sympathy for the accused, suggested that 
she should be allowed to explain herself in her own way; 
and she thereupon made the following statement. 

The first years of her marriage had been lonely; but 
her husband had not been unkind to her. If she had had 
a child she would not have been unhappy; but the days 
were long, and it rained too much. 

It was true that her husband, whenever he went away 
and left her, brought her a handsome present on his 
return; but this did not make up for the loneliness. At 
least nothing had, till he brought her the little brown 
dog from the East: after that she was much less un¬ 
happy. Her husband seemed pleased that she was so fond 
of the dog; he gave her leave to put her jewelled bracelet 
around its neck, and keep it always with her. 

One day she had fallen asleep in her room, with the 
dog at her feet, as his habit was. Her feet were bare 
and resting on his back. Suddenly she was waked by her 
husband: he stood beside her, smiling not unkindly. 

“You look like my great-grandmother, Juliane de Cor- 
nault, lying in the chapel with her feet on a little dog,” 
he said. 

The analogy sent a chill through her, but she laughed 
and answered: “Well, when I am dead you must put 
me beside her, carved in marble, with my dog at my 
feet.” 

“Oho—we’ll wait and see,” he said, laughing also, but 
20 


KERFOL 

with his black brows close together. ‘‘The dog is the 
emblem of fidelity.” 

“And do you doubt my right to lie with mine at my 
feet?” 

“When I’m in doubt I find out,” he answered. “I am 
an old man,” he added, “and people say I make you lead 
a lonely life. But I swear you shall have your monu¬ 
ment if you earn it.” 

“And I swear to be faithful,” she returned, “if only 
for the sake of having my little dog at my feet.” 

Not long afterward he went on business to the Quim- 
per Assizes; and while he was away his aunt, the widow 
of a great nobleman of the duchy, came to spend a night 
at Kerfol on her way to the pardon of Ste. Barbe. She 
was a woman of piety and consequence, and much re¬ 
spected by Yves de Cornault, and when she proposed to 
Anne to go with her to Ste. Barbe, no one could object, 
and even the chaplain declared himself in favour of the 
pilgrimage. So Anne set out for Ste. Barbe, and there for 
the first time she talked with Herve de Lanrivain. He 
had come once or twice to Kerfol with his father, but 
she had never before exchanged a dozen words with him. 
They did not talk for more than five minutes now: it 
was under the chestnuts, as the procession was coming 
out of the chapel. He said: “I pity you,” and she was 
surprised, for she had not supposed that any one thought 
her an object of pity. He added: “Call for me when 
you need me,” and she smiled a little, but was glad after¬ 
ward, and thought often of the meeting. 

She confessed to having seen him three times after¬ 
ward: not more. How or where she would not say— 
one had the impression that she feared to implicate some 
21 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


one. Their meetings had been rare and brief; and at the 
last he had told her that he was starting the next day for 
a foreign country, on a mission which was not without 
peril and might keep him for many months absent. He 
asked her for a remembrance, and she had none to give 
him but the collar about the little dog’s neck. She was 
sorry afterward that she had given it, but he was so 
unhappy at going that she had not had the courage to 
refuse. 

Her husband was away at the time. When he returned 
a few days later he picked up the animal to pet it, and 
noticed that its collar was missing. His wife told him 
that the dog had lost it in the undergrowth of the park, 
and that she and her maids had hunted a whole day for it. 
It was true, she explained to the court, that she had made 
the maids search for the necklet—they all believed the 
dog had lost it in the park. 

Her husband made no comment, and that evening at 
supper he was in his usual mood, between good and bad: 
you could never tell which. He talked a good deal, de¬ 
scribing what he had seen and done at Rennes; but now 
and then he stopped and looked hard at her, and when 
she went to bed she found her little dog strangled on 
her pillow. The little thing was dead, but still warm; 
she stooped to lift it, and her distress turned to horror 
when she discovered that it had been strangled by twisting 
twice round its throat the necklet she had given to 
Lanrivain. 

The next morning at dawn she buried the dog in the 
garden, and hid the necklet in her breast. She said 
nothing to her husband, then or later, and he said nothing 
to her; but that day he had a peasant hanged for stealing 
22 


KERFOL 


a faggot in the park, and the next day he nearly beat to 
death a young horse he was breaking. 

Winter set in, and the short days passed, and the long 
nights, one by one; and she heard nothing of Herve de 
Lanrivain. It might be that her husband had killed him; 
or merely that he had been robbed of the necklet. Day 
after day by the hearth among the spinning maids, night 
after night alone on her bed, she wondered and trembled. 
Sometimes at table her husband looked across at her and 
smiled; and then she felt sure that Lanrivain was dead. 
She dared not try to get news of him, for she was sure 
her husband would find out if she did: she had an idea 
that he could find out anything. Even when a witch- 
woman who was a noted seer, and could show you the 
whole world in her crystal, came to the castle for a night’s 
shelter, and the maids flocked to her, Anne held back. 

The winter was long and black and rainy. One day, 
in Yves de Cornault’s absence, some gypsies came to 
Kerfol with a troop of performing dogs. Anne bought 
the smallest and cleverest, a white dog with a feathery 
coat and one blue and one brown eye. It seemed to have 
been ill-treated by the gypsies, and clung to her plain¬ 
tively when she took it from them. That evening her 
husband came back, and when she went to bed she found 
the dog strangled on her pillow. 

After that she said to herself that she would never 
have another dog; but one bitter cold evening a poor lean 
greyhound was found whining at the castle-gate, and 
she took him in and forbade the maids to speak of him 
to her husband. She hid him in a room that no one went 
to, smuggled food to him from her own plate, made him 
a warm bed to lie on and petted him like a child. 

23 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


Yves de Cornault came home, and the next day she 
found the greyhound strangled on her pillow. She wept 
in secret, but said nothing, and resolved that even if she 
met a dog dying of hunger she would never bring him 
into the castle; but one day she found a young sheep-dog, 
a brindled puppy with good blue eyes, lying with a broken 
leg in the snow of the park. Yves de Cornault was at 
Rennes, and she brought the dog in, warmed and fed it, 
tied up its leg and hid it in the castle till her husband’s 
return. The day before, she gave it to a peasant woman 
who lived a long way off, and paid her handsomely to 
care for it and say nothing; but that night she heard a 
whining and scratching at her door, and when she 
opened it the lame puppy, drenched and shivering, jumped 
up on her with little sobbing barks. She hid him in her 
bed, and the next morning was about to have him taken 
back to the peasant woman when she heard her husband 
ride into the court. She shut the dog in a chest, and 
went down to receive him. An hour or two later, when 
she returned to her room, the puppy lay strangled on 
her pillow. . . . 

After that she dared not make a pet of any other dog; 
and her loneliness became almost unendurable. Some¬ 
times, when she crossed the court of the castle, and 
thought no one was looking, she stopped to pat the old 
pointer at the gate. But one day as she was caressing 
him her husband came out of the chapel; and the next day 
the old dog was gone. . . . 

This curious narrative was not told in one sitting of 
the court, or received without impatience and incredulous 
comment. It was plain that the Judges were surprised 
by its puerility, and that it did not help the accused in 
24 


KERFOL 


the eyes of the public. It was an odd tale, certainly; but 
what did it prove? That Yves de Cornault disliked dogs, 
and that his wife, to gratify her own fancy, persistently 
ignored this dislike. As for pleading this trivial disagree¬ 
ment as an excuse for her relations—whatever their 
nature—with her supposed accomplice, the argument was 
so absurd that her own lawyer manifestly regretted hav¬ 
ing let her make use of it, and tried several times to 
cut short her story. But she went on to the end, with 
a kind of hypnotised insistence, as though the scenes she 
evoked were so real to her that she had forgotten where 
she was and imagined herself to be re-living them. 

At length the Judge who had previously shown a cer¬ 
tain kindness to her said (leaning forward a little, one 
may suppose, from his row of dozing colleagues) : “Then 
you would have us believe that you murdered your hus¬ 
band because he would not let you keep a pet dog?” 

“I did not murder my husband.” 

“Who did, then? Herve de Lanrivain?” 

“No.” 

“Who then? Can you tell us?” 

“Yes, I can tell you. The dogs—” At that point she 
was carried out of the court in a swoon. 

It was evident that her lawyer tried to get her to 
abandon this line of defence. Possibly her explanation, 
whatever it was, had seemed convincing when she poured 
k out to him in the heat of their first private colloquy; 
but now that it was exposed to the cold daylight of 
judicial scrutiny, and the banter of the town, he was thor¬ 
oughly ashamed of it, and would have sacrificed her 
without a scruple to save his professional reputation. 
25 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


But the obstinate Judge—who perhaps, after all, was 
more inquisitive than kindly—evidently wanted to hear 
the story out, and she w^as ordered, the next day, to con¬ 
tinue her deposition. 

She said that after the disappearance of the old watch¬ 
dog nothing particular happened for a month or two. 
Her husband was much as usual: she did not remember 
any special incident. But one evening a pedlar woman 
came to the castle and was selling trinkets to the maids. 
She had no heart for trinkets, but she stood looking on 
while the women made their choice. And then, she did 
not know how, but the pedlar coaxed her into buying 
for herself a pear-shaped pomander with a strong scent 
in it—she had once seen something of the kind on a 
gypsy woman. She had no desire for the pomander, 
and did not know why she had bought it. The pedlar 
said that whoever wore it had the power to read the 
future; but she did not really believe that, or care much 
either. However, she bought the thing and took it up to 
her room, where she sat turning it about in her hand. 
Then the strange scent attracted her and she began to 
wonder what kind of spice was in the box. She opened 
it and found a grey bean rolled in a strip of paper; and 
on the paper she saw a sign she knew, and a message 
from Herve de Lanrivain, saying that he was at home 
again and would be at the door in the court that night 
after the moon had set. . . . 

She burned the paper and sat down to think. It was 
nightfall, and her husband was at home. . . . She had 
no way of warning Lanrivain, and there was nothing to 
do but to wait. . . . 

At this point I fancy the drowsy court-room beginning 
26 


KERFOL 


to wake up. Even to the oldest hand on the bench there 
must have been a certain relish in picturing the feelings 
of a woman on receiving such a message at nightfall from 
a man living twenty miles away, to whom she had no 
means of sending a warning. . . . 

She was not a clever woman, I imagine; and as the 
first result of her cogitation she appears to have made 
the mistake of being, that evening, too kind to her hus¬ 
band. She could not ply him with wine, according to 
the traditional expedient, for though he drank heavily at 
times, he had a strong head; and when he drank beyond 
its strength it was because he chose to, and not because 
a woman coaxed him. Not his wife, at any rate—she 
was an old story by now. As I read the case, I fancy 
there was no feeling for her left in him but the hatred 
occasioned by his supposed dishonour. 

At any rate, she tried to call up her old graces; but early 
in the evening he complained of pains and fever, and left 
the hall to go up to the closet where he sometimes slept. 
His servant carried him a cup of hot wine, and brought 
back word that he was sleeping and not to be disturbed; 
and an hour later, when Anne lifted the tapestry and 
listened at his door, she heard his loud regular breathing. 
She thought it might be a feint, and stayed a long time 
barefooted in the passage, her ear to the crack; but the 
breathing went on too steadily and naturally to be other 
than that of a man in a sound sleep. She crept back to 
her room reassured, and stood in the window watching 
the moon set through the trees of the park. The sky was 
misty and starless, and after the moon went down the 
night was black as pitch. She knew the time had come, 
and stole along the passage, past her husband’s door— 
27 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


where she stopped again to listen to his breathing—to 
the top of the stairs. There she paused a moment, and 
assured herself that no one was following her; then she 
began to go down the stairs in the darkness. They were 
so steep and winding that she had to go very slowly, for 
fear of stumbling. Her one thought was to get the door 
unbolted, tell Lanrivain to make his escape, and hasten 
back to her room. She had tried the bolt earlier in the 
evening, and managed to put a little grease on it; but 
nevertheless, when she drew it, it gave a squeak . . . not 
loud, but it made her heart stop; and the next minute, 
overhead, she heard a noise. . . . 

“What noise ?” the prosecution interposed. 

“My husband’s voice calling out my name and cursing 
me.” 

“What did you hear after that?” 

“A terrible scream and a fall.” 

“Where was Herve de Lanrivain at this time?” 

“He was standing outside in the court. I just made 
him out in the darkness. I told him for God’s sake to 
go, and then I pushed the door shut.” 

“What did you do next?” 

“I stood at the foot of the stairs and listened.” 

“What did you hear?” 

“I heard dogs snarling and panting.” (Visible dis¬ 
couragement of the bench, boredom of the public, and 
exasperation of the lawyer for the defence. Dogs again! 
But the inquisitive Judge insisted.) 

“What dogs?” 

She bent her head and spoke so low that she had to be 
told to repeat her answer: “I don’t know.” 

“How do you mean—you don’t know?” 

28 


KERFOL 


“I don’t know what dogs. . . 

The Judge again intervened: “Try to tell us exactly 
what happened. How long did you remain at the foot 
of the stairs?” 

“Only a few minutes.” 

“And what was going on meanwhile overhead?” 

“The dogs kept on snarling and panting. Once or 
twice he cried out. I think he moaned. Then he was 
quiet.” 

“Then what happened?” 

“Then I heard a sound like the noise of a pack when 
the wolf is thrown to them—gulping and lapping.” 

(There was a groan of disgust and repulsion through 
the court, and another attempted intervention by the dis¬ 
tracted lawyer. But the inquisitive Judge was still in¬ 
quisitive.) 

“And all the while you did not go up?” 

“Yes—I went up then—to drive them off.” 

“The dogs?” 

“Yes.” 

“Well-?” 

“When I got there it was quite dark. I found my 
husband’s flint and steel and struck a spark. I saw him 
lying there. He was dead.” 

“And the dogs?” 

“The dogs were gone.” 

“Gone—where to?” 

“I don’t know. There was no way out—and there 
were no dogs at Kerfol.” 

She straightened herself to her full height, threw her 
arms above her head, and fell down on the stone floor 
with a long scream. There was a moment of confusion 
29 



TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


in the court-room. Some one on the bench was heard to 
say: “This is clearly a case for the ecclesiastical author¬ 
ities”—and the prisoner’s lawyer doubtless jumped at the 
suggestion. 

After this, the trial loses itself in a maze of cross¬ 
questioning and squabbling. Every witness who was 
called corroborated Anne de Cornault’s statement that 
there were no dogs at Kerfol: had been none for several 
months. The master of the house had taken a dislike 
to dogs, there was no denying it. But, on the other hand, 
at the inquest, there had been long and bitter discussions 
as to the nature of the dead man’s wounds. One of the 
surgeons called in had spoken of marks that looked like 
bites. The suggestion of witchcraft was revived, and the 
opposing lawyers hurled tomes of necromancy at each 
other. 

At last Anne de Cornault was brought back into court 
—at the instance of the same Judge—and asked if she 
knew where the dogs she spoke of could have come 
from. On the body of her Redeemer she swore that she 
did not. Then the Judge put his final question: “If 
the dogs you think you heard had been known to you, 
do you think you would have recognized them by their 
barking?” 

“Yes.” 

“Did you recognize them?” 

“Yes.” 

“What dogs do you take them to have been?” 

“My dead dogs,” she said in a whisper. . . . She was 
taken out of court, not to reappear there again. There 
was some kind of ecclesiastical investigation, and the end 
of the business was that the Judges disagreed with each 
30 


KERFOL 


other, and with the ecclesiastical committee, and that Anne 
de Cornault was finally handed over to the keeping of 
her husband’s family, who shut her up in the keep of 
Kerfol, where she is said to have died many years later, 
a harmless mad-woman. 

So ends her story. As for that of Herve de Lanrivain, 
I had only to apply to his collateral descendant for its sub¬ 
sequent details. The evidence against the young man 
being insufficient, and his family influence in the duchy 
considerable, he was set free, and left soon afterward 
for Paris. He was probably in no mood for a worldly 
life, and he appears to have come almost immediately 
under the influence of the famous M. Arnauld d’Andilly 
and the gentlemen of Port Royal. A year or two later 
he was received into their Order, and without achieving 
any particular distinction he followed its good and evil 
fortunes till his death some twenty years later. Lan¬ 
rivain showed me a portrait of him by a pupil of Philippe 
de Champaigne: sad eyes, an impulsive mouth and a 
narrow brow. Poor Herve de Lanrivain: it was a grey 
ending. Yet as I looked at his stiff and sallow effigy, in 
the dark dress of the Jansenists, I almost found myself 
envying his fate. After all, in the course of his life two 
great things had happened to him: he had loved roman¬ 
tically, and he must have talked with Pascal. . . . 


THE CHINK AND THE CHILD 

By THOMAS BURKE 

I T is a tale of love and lovers that they tell in the low- 
lit Causeway that slinks from West India Dock 
Road to the dark waste of waters beyond. In Penny- 
fields, too, you may hear it; and I do not doubt that it is 
told in far-away Tai-Ping, in Singapore, in Tokio, in 
Shanghai, and those other gay-lamped haunts of wonder 
whither the wandering people of Limehouse go and 
whence they return so casually. It is a tale for tears, and 
should you hear it in the lilied tongue of the yellow men, 
it would awaken in you all your pity. In our bald speech 
it must, unhappily, lose its essential fragrance, that qual¬ 
ity that will lift an affair of squalor into the loftier 
spheres of passion and imagination, beauty and sorrow. 
It will sound unconvincing, a little . . . you know . . . 
the kind of thing that is best forgotten. Perhaps . . . 
But listen. 

It is Battling Burrows, the lightning welter-weight of 
Shadwell, the box o’ tricks, the Tetrarch of the ring, 
who enters first. Battling Burrows, the pride of Ratcliff, 
Poplar and Limehouse, and the despair of his manager 
and backers. For he loved wine, woman and song; and 
the boxing world held that he couldn’t last long on that. 
There was any amount of money in him for his parasites 
if only the damned women could be cut out; but again 
and again would he disappear from his training quarters 

From Limehouse Nights, by Thomas Burke. Copyright, 1917, by 
Robert M. McBride and Company. 

32 



THE CHINK AND THE CHILD 


on the eve of a big fight, to consort with Molly and 
Dolly, and to drink other things than barley-water and 
lemon-juice. Wherefore Chuck Light foot, his manager, 
forced him to fight on any and every occasion while he 
was good and a money-maker; for at any moment the 
collapse might come, and Chuck would be called upon by 
his creditors to strip off that “shirt” which at every 
contest he laid upon his man. 

Battling was of a type that is too common in the 
eastern districts of London; a type that upsets all ac¬ 
cepted classifications. He wouldn’t be classed. He was 
a curious mixture of athleticism and degeneracy. He 
could run like a deer, leap like a greyhound, fight like a 
machine, and drink like a suction-hose. He was a bully; 
he had the courage of the high hero. He was an open-air 
sport; he had the vices of a French decadent. 

It was one of his love adventures that properly begins 
this tale; for the girl had come to Battling one night 
with a recital of terrible happenings; of an angered parent, 
of a slammed door. ... In her arms was a bundle of 
white rags. Now Battling, like so many sensualists, was 
also a sentimentalist. He took that bundle of white rags; 
he paid the girl money to get into the country; and the 
bundle of white rags had existed in and about his dom¬ 
icile in Pekin Street, Limehouse, for some eleven years. 
Her position was nondescript; to the casual observer it 
would seem that she was Battling’s relief punch-ball—an 
unpleasant post for any human creature to occupy, espe¬ 
cially if you are a little girl of twelve, and the place be the 
one-room household of the lightning welter-weight. 
When Battling was cross with his manager . . . well, 
it is indefensible to strike your manager or to throw 
33 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


chairs at him, if he is a good manager; but to use a dog- 
whip on a small child is permissible and quite as satis¬ 
fying; at least he found it so. On these occasions, then, 
when very cross with his sparring partners, or over¬ 
flushed with victory and juice of the grape, he would 
flog Lucy. But he was reputed by the boys to be a good 
fellow. He only whipped the child when he was drunk; 
and he was only drunk for eight months of the year. 

For just over twelve years this bruised little body had 
crept about Poplar and Limehouse. Always the white 
face was scarred with red, or black-furrowed with tears; 
always in her steps and in her look was expectation of 
dread things. Night after night her sleep was broken 
by the cheerful Battling’s brute voice and violent hands; 
and terrible were the lessons which life taught her in 
those few years. Yet, for all the starved face and the 
transfixed air, there was a lurking beauty about her, a 
something that called you in the soft curve of her cheek 
that cried for kisses and was fed with blows, and in the 
splendid mournfulness that grew in eyes and lips. The 
brown hair chimed against the pale face, like the rounding 
of a verse. The blue cotton frock and the broken shoes 
could not break the loveliness of her slender figure or the 
shy grace of her movements as she flitted about the squalid 
alleys of the docks; though in all that region of wasted 
life and toil and decay, there was not one that noticed 
her, until . . . 

Now there lived in Chinatown, in one lousy room over 
Mr. Tai Fu’s store in Pennyfields, a wandering yellow 
man, named Cheng Huan. Cheng Huan was a poet. 
He did not realise it. He had never been able to under¬ 
stand why he was unpopular; and he died without know- 
34 


THE CHINK AND THE CHILD 

ing. But a poet he was, tinged with the materialism of 
his race, and in his poor listening heart strange echoes 
would awake of which he himself was barely conscious. 
He regarded things differently from other sailors; he felt 
things more passionately, and things which they felt not 
at all; so he lived alone instead of at one of the lodging- 
houses. Every evening he would sit at his window and 
watch the street. Then, a little later, he would take a 
jolt of opium at the place at the corner of Formosa 
Street. 

He had come to London by devious ways. He had 
loafed on the Bund at Shanghai. The fateful inter¬ 
vention of a crimp had landed him on a boat. He got 
to Cardiff, and sojourned in its Chinatown; thence to 
Liverpool, to Glasgow; thence, by a ticket from the 
Asiatics’ Aid Society, to Limehouse, where he remained 
for two reasons—because it cost him nothing to live 
there, and because he was too lazy to find a boat to take 
him back to Shanghai. 

So he would lounge and smoke cheap cigarettes, and 
sit at his window, from which point he had many times 
observed the lyrical Lucy. He noticed her casually. An¬ 
other day, he observed her, not casually. Later, he looked 
long at her; later still, he began to watch for her and for 
that strangely provocative something about the toss of 
the head and the hang of the little blue skirt as it coyly 
kissed her knee. 

Then that beauty which all Limehouse had missed 
smote Cheng. Straight to his heart it went, and cried 
itself into his very blood. Thereafter the spirit of poetry 
broke her blossoms all about his odorous chamber. Noth¬ 
ing was the same. Pennyfields became a happy-lanterned 
35 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


street, and the monotonous fiddle in the house opposite 
was the music of his fathers. Bits of old song floated 
through his mind: little sweet verses of Le Tai-pih, mur¬ 
muring of plum blossom, ricefield and stream. Day by 
day he would moon at his window, or shuffle about the 
streets, lighting to a flame when Lucy would pass and 
gravely return his quiet regard; and night after night, 
too, he would dream of a pale, lily-lovely child. 

And now the Fates moved swiftly various pieces on 
their sinister board, and all that followed happened with 
a speed and precision that showed direction from higher 
ways. 

It was Wednesday night in Limehouse, and for once 
clear of mist. Out of the coloured darkness of the 
Causeway stole the muffled wail of reed instruments, and, 
though every window was closely shuttered, between the 
joints shot jets of light and stealthy voices, and you 
could hear the whisper of slippered feet, and the stuttering 
steps of the satyr and the sadist. It was to the cafe 
in the middle of the Causeway, lit by the pallid blue 
light that is the symbol of China throughout the world, 
that Cheng Huan came, to take a dish of noodle and 
some tea. Thence he moved to another house whose 
stairs ran straight to the street, and above whose doorway 
a lamp glowed like an evil eye. At this establishment he 
mostly took his pipe of “chandu” and a brief chat with 
the keeper of the house, for, although not popular, and 
very silent, he liked sometimes to be in the presence of 
his compatriots. Like a figure of a shadowgraph he 
slid through the door and up the stairs. 

The chamber he entered was a bit of the Orient squat¬ 
ting at the portals of the West. It was a well-kept place 
36 


THE CHINK AND THE CHILD 


where one might play a game of fan-tan, or take a shot or 
so of li-un, or purchase other varieties of Oriental delight. 
It was sunk in a purple dusk, though here and there a 
lantern stung the gloom. Low couches lay around the 
walls, and strange men decorated them: Chinese, Japs, 
Malays, Lascars, with one or two white girls; and sleek, 
noiseless attendants swam from couch to couch. Away 
in the far corner sprawled a lank figure in brown shirt¬ 
ing, its nerveless fingers curled about the stem of a spent 
pipe. On one of the lounges a scorbutic nigger sat 
with a Jewess from Shadwell. Squatting on a table in 
the centre, beneath one of the lanterns, was a musician 
with a reed, blinking upon the company like a sly cat, 
and making his melody of six repeated notes. 

The atmosphere churned. The dirt of years, tobacco 
of many growings, opium, betel nut, and moist flesh allied 
themselves in one grand assault against the nostrils. 

As Cheng brooded on his insect-ridden cushion, of a 
sudden the lantern above the musician was caught by the 
ribbon of his reed. It danced and flung a hazy radiance 
on a divan in the shadow. He saw—started—half rose. 
His heart galloped, and the blood pounded in his quiet 
veins. Then he dropped again,—crouched, and stared. 

O lily-flowers and plum blossoms! O silver streams 
and dim-starred skies! O wine and roses, song and laugh¬ 
ter! For there, kneeling on a mass of rugs, mazed and 
big-eyed, but understanding, was Lucy ... his Lucy 
... his little maid. Through the dusk she must have felt 
his intent gaze upon her; for he crouched there, fasci¬ 
nated, staring into the now obscured corner where she 
knelt. 

But the sickness which momentarily gripped him on 
37 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


finding in this place his snowy-breasted pearl passed and 
gave place to great joy. She was here; he would talk 
with her. Little English he had, but simple words, those 
with few gutturals, he had managed to pick up; so he 
rose, the masterful lover, and, with feline movements, 
crossed the nightmare chamber to claim his own. 

If you wonder how Lucy came to be in this bagnio, 
the explanation is simple. Battling was in training. He 
had flogged her that day before starting work; he had 
then had a few brandies—not many; some eighteen or 
nineteen—and had locked the door of his room and taken 
the key. Lucy was, therefore, homeless, and a girl some¬ 
what older than Lucy, so old and so wise, as girls are in 
that region, saw in her a possible source of revenue. So 
there they were, and to them appeared Cheng. 

From what horrors he saved her that night cannot be 
told, for her ways were too audaciously childish to hold 
her long from harm in such a place. What he brought to 
her was love and death. 

For he sat by her. He looked at her—reverently yet 
passionately. He touched her—wistfully yet eagerly. He 
locked a finger in her wondrous hair. She did not start 
away; she did not tremble. She knew well what she 
had to be afraid of in that place; but she was not afraid 
of Cheng. She pierced the mephitic gloom and scanned 
his face. No, she was not afraid. His yellow hands, 
his yellow face, his smooth black hair . . . well, he was 
the first thing that had ever spoken soft words to her; 
the first thing that had ever laid a hand upon her that 
was not brutal; the first thing that had deferred in manner 
towards her as though she, too, had a right to live. She 
knew his words were sweet, though she did not under- 

38 


THE CHINK AND THE CHILD 

stand them. Nor can they be set down. Half that he 
spoke was in village Chinese; the rest in a mangling of 
English which no distorted spelling could possibly repro¬ 
duce. 

But he drew her back against the cushions and asked 
her name, and she told him; and he inquired her age, and 
she told him; and he had then two beautiful words that 
came easily to his tongue. He repeated them again and 
again: 

“Lucia . . . Til Lucia. . . . Twelve. . . . Twelve.” 
Musical phrases they were, dropping from his lips, and to 
the child who heard her name pronounced so lovingly, 
they were the lost heights of melody. She clung to him, 
and he to her. She held his strong arm in both of hers 
as they crouched on the divan, and nestled her cheek 
against his coat. 

Well ... he took her home to his wretched room. 

“Li’l Lucia, come-a-home . . . Lucia.” 

His heart was on fire. As they slipped out of the 
noisomeness into the night air and crossed the West India 
Dock Road into Pennyfields, they passed unnoticed. It 
was late, for one thing, and for another . . . well, no¬ 
body cared particularly. His blood rang with soft music 
and the solemnity of drums, for surely he had found now 
what for many years he had sought—his world’s one 
flower. Wanderer he was, from Tuan-tsen to Shanghai, 
Shanghai to Glasgow, Cardiff . . . Liverpool . . . Lon¬ 
don. He had dreamed often of the women of his native 
land; perchance one of them should be his flower. 
Women, indeed, there had been. Swatow ... he had 
recollections of certain rose-winged hours in coast cities. 
At many places to which chance had led him a little bird 
39 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


had perched itself upon his heart, but so lightly and for 
so brief a while as hardly to be felt. But now—now he 
had found her in this alabaster Cockney child. So that he 
was glad and had great joy of himself and the blue and 
silver night, and the harsh flares of the Poplar Hippo¬ 
drome. 

You will observe that he had claimed her, but had not 
asked himself whether she were of an age for love. The 
white perfection of the child had captivated every sense. 
It may be that he forgot that he was in London and not 
in Tuan-tsen. It may be that he did not care. Of that 
nothing can be told. All that is known is that his love 
was a pure and holy thing. Of that we may be sure, for 
his worst enemies have said it. 

Slowly, softly they mounted the stairs to his room, and 
with almost an obeisance he entered and drew her in. A 
bank of cloud raced to the east and a full moon thrust a 
sharp sword of light upon them. Silence lay over all 
Pennyfields. With a bird-like movement, she looked up 
at him—her face alight, her tiny hands upon his coat— 
clinging, wondering, trusting. He took her hand and 
kissed it; repeated the kiss upon her cheek and lip and 
little bosom, twining his fingers in her hair. Docilely, 
and echoing the smile of his lemon lips in a way that 
thrilled him almost to laughter, she returned his kisses 
impetuously, gladly. 

He clasped the nestling to him. Bruised, tearful, with 
the love of life almost thrashed out of her, she had flut¬ 
tered to him out of the evil night. 

“O liT Lucia!” And he put soft hands upon her, and 
smoothed her and crooned over her many gracious things 
in his flowered speech. So they stood in the moonlight, 
40 


THE CHINK AND THE CHILD 


while she told him the story of her father, of her beat¬ 
ings, and starvings and unhappiness. 

“0 lid Lucia. . . . White Blossom. . . . Twelve. . . . 
Twelve years old!” 

As he spoke, the clock above the Milwall Docks shot 
twelve crashing notes across the night. When the last 
echo died, he moved to a cupboard, and from it he drew 
strange things . . . formless masses of blue and gold, 
magical things of silk, and a vessel that was surely 
Aladdin’s lamp, and a box of spices. He took these 
robes, and, with tender, reverent fingers, removed from 
his White Blossom the besmirched rags that covered her 
and robed her again, and led her then to the heap of stuff 
that was his bed, and bestowed her safely. 

For himself, he squatted on the floor before her, hold¬ 
ing one grubby little hand. There he crouched all night, 
under the lyric moon, sleepless, watchful; and sweet con¬ 
tent was his. He had fallen into an uncomfortable 
posture, and his muscles ached intolerably. But she slept, 
and he dared not move nor release her hand lest he 
should awaken her. Weary and trustful, she slept, know¬ 
ing that the yellow man was kind and that she might sleep 
with no fear of a steel hand smashing the delicate struc¬ 
ture of her dreams. 

In the morning, when she awoke, still wearing her blue 
and yellow silk, she gave a cry of amazement. Cheng 
had been about. Many times had he glided up and down 
the two flights of stairs, and now at last his room was 
prepared for his princess. It was swept and garnished, 
and was an apartment worthy a maid who is loved by a 
poet-prince. There was a bead curtain. There were 
muslins of pink and white. There were four bowls of 
4i 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 

flowers, clean, clear flowers to gladden the White Blos¬ 
som and set off her sharp beauty. And there was a bowl 
of water, and a sweet lotion for the bruise on her cheek. 

When she had risen, her prince ministered to her with 
rice and egg and tea. Cleansed and robed and calm, she 
sat before him, perched on the end of many cushions as 
on a throne, with all the grace of the child princess in 
the story. She was a poem. The beauty hidden by 
neglect and fatigue shone out now more clearly and 
vividly, and from the head sunning over with curls to 
the small white feet, now bathed and sandalled, she seemed 
the living interpretation of a Chinese lyric. And she was 
his; her sweet self and her prattle, and her bird-like ways 
were all his own. 

Oh, beautifully they loved. For two days he held her. 
Soft caresses from his yellow hands and long, devout 
kisses were all their demonstration. Each night he would 
tend her, as might mother to child; and each night he 
watched and sometimes slumbered at the foot of her 
couch. 

But now there were those that ran to Battling at his 
training quarters across the river, with the news that his 
child had gone with a Chink—a yellow man. And Bat¬ 
tling was angry. He discovered parental rights. He dis¬ 
covered indignation. A yellow man after his kid! He’d 
learn him. Battling did not like men who were not born 
in the same great country as himself. Particularly he 
disliked yellow men. His birth and education in Shad- 
well had taught him that of all creeping things that creep 
upon the earth the most insidious is the Oriental in the 
West. And a yellow man and a child. It was ... as 
you might say . . . so . . . kind of . . . well, wasn’t 
42 


THE CHINK AND THE CHILD 


it? He bellowed that it was “unnacherel.” The yeller 
man would go through it. Yeller! It was his supreme 
condemnation, his final epithet for all conduct of which 
he disapproved. 

There was no doubt that he was' extremely annoyed. 
He went to the Blue Lantern, in what was once Ratcliff 
Highway, and thumped the bar, and made all his world 
agree with him. And when they agreed with him he got 
angrier still. So that when, a few hours later, he climbed 
through the ropes at the Netherlands to meet Bud Tuffit 
for ten rounds, it was Bud’s fight all the time, and to 
that bright boy’s astonishment he was the victor on points 
at the end of the ten. Battling slouched out of the ring, 
still more determined to let the Chink have it where the 
chicken had the axe. He left the house with two pals 
and a black man, and a number of really inspired curses 
from his manager. 

On the evening of the third day, then, Cheng slipped 
sleepily down the stairs to procure more flowers and 
more rice. The genial Ho Ling, who keeps the Canton 
store, held him in talk some little while, and he was gone 
from his room perhaps half-an-hour. Then he glided 
back, and climbed with happy feet the forty stairs to his 
temple of wonder. 

With a push of a finger he opened the door, and the 
blood froze on his cheek, the flowers fell from him. The 
temple was empty and desolate; White Blossom was gone. 
The muslin hangings were torn down and trampled under¬ 
foot. The flowers had been flung from their bowls about 
the floor, and the bowls lay in fifty fragments. The joss 
was smashed. The cupboard had been opened. Rice was 
scattered here and there. The little straight bed had 
43 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


been jumped upon by brute feet. Everything that could 
be smashed or violated had been so treated, and—horror 
of all—the blue and yellow silk robe had been rent in 
pieces, tied in grotesque knots, and slung derisively about 
the table legs. 

I pray devoutly that you may never suffer what Cheng 
Huan suffered in that moment. The pangs of death, 
with no dying; the sickness of the soul which longs to 
escape and cannot; the imprisoned animal within the 
breast which struggles madly for a voice and finds none; 
all the agonies of all the ages—the agonies of every aban¬ 
doned lover and lost woman, past and to come—all these 
things were his in that moment. 

Then he found voice and gave a great cry, and men 
from below came up to him; and they told him how the 
man who boxed had been there with a black man; how 
he had torn the robes from his child, and dragged her 
down the stairs by her hair; and how he had shouted 
aloud for Cheng and had vowed to return and deal sep¬ 
arately with him. 

Now a terrible dignity came to Cheng, and the soul of 
his great fathers swept over him. He closed the door 
against them, and fell prostrate over what had been the 
resting-place of White Blossom. Those without heard 
strange sounds as of an animal in its last pains; and it 
was even so. Cheng was dying. The sacrament of his 
high and holy passion had been profaned; the last sanc¬ 
tuary of the Oriental—his soul dignity—had been as¬ 
saulted. The love robes had been torn to ribbons; the 
veil of his temple cut down. Life was no longer possible; 
and life without his little lady, his White Blossom, was 
no longer desirable. 


44 


THE CHINK AND THE CHILD 


Prostrate he lay for the space of some five minutes. 
Then, in his face all the pride of accepted destiny, he 
arose. He drew together the little bed. With reverent 
hands he took the pieces of blue and yellow silk, kissing 
them and fondling them and placing them about the pil¬ 
low. Silently he gathered up the flowers, and the broken 
earthenware, and burnt some prayer papers and prepared 
himself for death. 

Now it is the custom among those of the sect of Cheng 
that the dying shall present love-gifts to their enemies; 
and when he had set all in order, he gathered his brown 
canvas coat about him, stole from the house, and set out 
to find Battling Burrows, bearing under the coat his love- 
gift to Battling. White Blossom he had no hope of 
finding. He had heard of Burrows many times; and he 
judged that, now that she was taken from him, never 
again would he hold those hands or touch that laughing 
hair. Nor, if he did, could it change things from what 
they were. Nothing that was not a dog could live in the 
face of this sacrilege. 

As he came before the house in Pekin Street, where 
Battling lived, he murmured gracious prayers. Fortu¬ 
nately, it was a night of thick river mist, and through the 
enveloping velvet none could observe or challenge him. 
The main door was open, as are all doors in this district. 
He writhed across the step, and through to the back room, 
where again the door yielded to a touch. 

Darkness. Darkness and silence, and a sense of fright¬ 
ful things. He peered through it. Then he fumbled under 
his jacket—found a match—struck it. An inch of a 
candle stood on the mantelshelf. He lit it. He looked 
around. No sign of Burrows, but . . . Almost before 
45 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


he looked he knew what awaited him. But the sense of 
finality had kindly stunned him; he could suffer nothing 
more. 

On the table lay a dog-whip. In the corner a belt 
had been flung. Half across the greasy couch lay White 
Blossom. A few rags of clothing were about her pale 
and slim body; her hair hung limp as her limbs; her eyes 
were closed. As Cheng drew nearer and saw the savage 
red rails that ran across and across the beloved body, he 
could not scream—he could not think. He dropped beside 
the couch. He laid gentle hands upon her, and called 
soft names. She was warm to the touch. The pulse 
was still. 

Softly, oh, so softly, he bent over the little frame that 
had enclosed his friend-spirit, and his light kisses fell 
all about her. Then, with the undirected movements of 
a sleep-walker, he bestowed the rags decently about her, 
clasped her in strong arms, and crept silently into the 
night. 

From Pekin Street to Pennyfields it is but a turn or, 
two, and again he passed unobserved as he bore his tired 
bird back to her nest. He laid her upon the bed, and 
covered the lily limbs with the blue and yellow silks and 
strewed upon her a few of the trampled flowers. Then, 
with more kisses and prayers, he crouched beside her. 

So, in the ghastly Limehouse morning, they were found 
—the dead child, and the Chink, kneeling beside her, 
with a sharp knife gripped in a vice-like hand, its blade 
far between his ribs. 

Meantime, having vented his wrath on his prodigal 
daughter, Battling, still cross, had returned to the Blue 
Lantern, and there he stayed with a brandy tumbler in 
46 


THE CHINK AND THE CHILD 


his fist, forgetful of an appointment at Premierland, 
whereby he should have been in the ring at ten o’clock 
sharp. For the space of an hour Chuck Light foot was 
going blasphemously to and fro in Poplar, seeking Bat¬ 
tling and not finding him, and murmuring in tearful 
tones: “Battling—you dammanblasted Battling—where 
are yeh?” 

His opponent was in his corner sure enough, but there 
was no fight. For Battling lurched from the Blue Lan¬ 
tern to Pekin Street. He lurched into his happy home, 
and he cursed Lucy, and called for her. And finding no 
matches, he lurched to where he knew the couch should 
be, and flopped heavily down. 

Now it is a peculiarity of the reptile tribe that its 
members are impatient of being flopped on without warn¬ 
ing. So, when Battling flopped, eighteen inches of 
writhing gristle upreared itself on the couch, and got home 
on him as Bud Tufflt had done the night before—one to 
the ear, one to the throat, and another to the forearm. 

Battling went down and out. 

And he, too, was found in the morning, with Cheng 
Huan’s love-gift coiled about his neck. 


THE NOMAD 

By ROBERT HICHENS 


I 

T HE fate of Madame Lemaire had certainly not 
been an ordinary one. She was French, of Mar¬ 
seilles, as you could tell by her accent, especially 
when she said “C’est bien!” and had been an extremely 
coquettish and lively girl, with a strong will of her own 
and a passionate love of pleasure and of town life. From 
her talk when she was seventeen, you would have gath¬ 
ered that if she ever moved from Marseilles it would be 
to go to Paris. Nothing else would be good enough for 
her. She felt herself born to play a part in some great 
city. 

And yet, at the age of forty, here she was in the desert 
of Sahara, keeping an auberge at El-Kelf under the salt 
mountain! She sometimes wondered how it had ever 
come about, when she crossed the court of the inn, round 
which mules of customers were tethered in open sheds, 
or when she served the rough Algerian wine to farmers 
from the Tell, or to some dusty commercial traveller 
from Batna, in the arbour trellised with vines that fronted 
the desert. 

Marie Lemaire, who had been Marie Bretelle, at El- 
Kelf! Marie Lemaire in the desert of Sahara attending 
upon God knows whom: Algerians, Spahis, camel- 
drivers, gazelle-hunters! No; it was too much! 

From Snakebite, by Robert Hichens. Copyright, 1919, by George 
H. Doran Company. 


48 



THE NOMAD 


But if you have a “kink” in you, to what may you 
not come? Marie Bretelle’s “kink” had been an idiotic 
softness for handsome faces. 

She wanted to shine in the world, to cut a dash, to go 
to Paris; or, if that were impossible, to stay in Marseilles 
married to some rich city man, and to give parties, and 
to get gowns from Madame Vannier, of the Rue de Cliche, 
and hats from Trebichot, of the Rue des Colonies, and 
to attend the theatres, and to be stared at and pointed out 
on to the race-course, and—and, in fact, to be the belle of 
Marseilles. And here she was at El-Kelf and all because 
of that “kink” in her nature! 

Lemaire had had a handsome face and been a fine 
man, stalwart, bold, muscular, determined. He did not 
belong to Marseilles, but had come there to give an acro¬ 
batic show in a music-hall; and there Marie Bretelle had 
seen him, dressed in silver-spangled tights, and doing 
marvellous feats on three parallel bars. His bare arms 
had lumps on them like balls of iron, his fair moustaches 
were trained into points, his bofd eyes were lit with a fire 
to fascinate women; and—well, Marie Bretelle ran away 
with him and became Madame Lemaire. And so she 
came to Algiers, where Lemaire had an accident while 
giving his performance. And that was the beginning of 
the Odyssey which had ended at El-Kelf. 

“Fool—fool—fool!” 

Often she said that to herself, as she went about the 
inn doing her duties with grains of sand in her hair. 

“Fool—fool—fool!” 

The word was taken by the wind of the waste and 
carried away to the desert. 

After his accident Lemaire lost his engagements. Then 

49 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


he lost his looks. He put on flesh. He ceased to train 
his moustaches into points. The great muscles got soft, 
were covered with flabby fat. Finally he took to drink. 
And so they drifted. 

To earn some money he became many things—guide, 
concierge, tout for “La Belle Fatma.” He had impos¬ 
sible professions in Algiers. And Marie? Well, it were 
best not to scrutinise her life too closely under the burn¬ 
ing sun of Africa. Whatever it was, it was not very 
successful; and they drifted from Algiers. Where did 
they go? Where had they not been in this fiery land? 
Oran on the Moroccan border had seen them, and the 
mosques of Kairouan, windy Tunis, and rock-bound 
Constantine, laughing Bougie in its wall by the water, 
Fort National in the Grande Kabyle. They had been 
everywhere. And at last some wind of the desert had 
blown them, like poor grains of desert sand, from the 
bending palms of Biskra to the mud walls of El-Kelf. 

And here—Gold help them!—for ten years they had 
been keeping the inn, “Au Retour du Desert.” 

For ten, long, dry years, and such an inn! Why, at 
Marseilles they would have called it—well, one cannot 
tell what they would have called it on the Cannebiere! 
But they would have found a name for it, that is certain. 

It stood alone, this inn, quite alone in the desert, which 
at El-Kelf circles a small oasis in which there is hidden 
among fair-sized palms a meagre Arab village. Why the 
inn should have been built outside of the oasis, away 
from the village, I cannot tell you. But so it is. It 
seems to be disdainful of the earth houses of the Arabs, 
to be determined to have nothing to do with them. And 
yet there is little reason in its disdain. 

50 


THE NOMAD 


For it, too, is built on sun-dried earth for the most 
part, and has only the ground floor possessed by most 
of them. It stands facing flat but not illimitable desert. 
The road that passes before it winds way to land where 
there is water; and from the trellised arbour, but far 
off, one can see in the sunshine the sharp, shrill green 
of crops, grown by the Spahis whose tented camp lies 
to the right of the caravan track that leads over the Col 
de Sfa to Biskra. 

Far, far along that road one can see from the inn, 
till its whiteness is as the whiteness of a thread, and 
any figures travelling upon it are less than little dolls, 
and even a caravan is but a moving dimness shrouded 
in a dimness of dust. But towards evening, when the 
strange clearness of Africa becomes almost terribly acute, 
every speck upon the thread has a meaning to attract 
the eye, and set the mind at work asking: 

“What is this that is coming upon the road? Who 
is this that travels? Is it a mounted man on his thin 
horse, with his matchlock pointing to the sky? Or is it 
a woman hunched upon a trotting donkey ? Or a Nomad 
on his camel? Or is it only some poor desert man, half 
naked in his rags, who tramps on his bare brown feet 
along sun-baked track, his hood drawn above his eyes, 
his knotted club in his hand?” 

After ten years Madame Lemaire still asked herself 
such questions in the arbour of the inn, when business 
was slack, when her husband was away, or was lying 
half drunk upon the bed after an extra dose of absinthe, 
and the one-eyed Arab servant, Hadj, was squatting on 
his haunches in a corner smoking keef. 

Not that the answer mattered at all to her. She ex- 
51 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


pected nothing of the road that led from the desert. 
But her mind, stagnant though it had become in the 
solitude of Africa, had to do something to occupy itself. 
And so she often stared across the plain, with an aim¬ 
less “Je me demande” trembling upon her lips, and a 
hard expression of inquiry in her dark brown eyes, whose 
lids were seamed with tiny wrinkles. Perhaps you will 
wonder why Madame Lemaire, having once had a pas¬ 
sionate love for pleasure and a strong will of her own, 
had consented to remain for ten years in the solitude of 
El-Kelf, drudging in a miserable auberge, to which few 
people, and those but poor ones, ever came. 

Circumstances and Robert Lemaire had been too much 
for her. Both had been cruel. She was something 
of a slave to both. Lemaire was an utter failure, but 
there lurked within him still, under the waves of absinthe, 
traces of the dominating power which had long ago made 
him a success. 

Madame Lemaire had worshipped him once, had 
adored his strength and beauty. They were gone now. 
He was a wreck. But he was a wreck with fierceness in 
it. And command with him had become a habit. And 
Africa bids one accept. And so Madame Lemaire had 
stayed for ten long years drudging at the inn beside the 
salt mountain, and staring down the long white road for 
the something strange and interesting from the desert 
that never, never came. 

And still Lemaire drank absinthe, and cursed and 
drowsed. For ten long years! And still Hadj squatted 
upon his haunches and drugged himself with keef. And 
still Madame Lemaire stood under the trellised vine, with 
52 


THE NOMAD 

the sand-grains in her hair, and gazed and gazed over 
the plain. 

And when a black speck appeared far off upon the 
whiteness of the track, she watched it till her eyes ached, 
demanding who, or what, it was—whether a Spahi on 
horseback, a woman on her donkey, a Nomad on his 
camel, or some dark and half-naked pedestrian of the 
sands, that travelled through the sunset glory towards 
the lonely inn. 

Although Robert Lemaire was a wreck he was not an 
old man in years, only forty-five, and the fine and tonic 
air of the Sahara preserved from complete destruction. 
Shaggy and unkept he was, with a heavy bulk of chest 
and shoulders, a large, pale face, and the angry and 
distressed eyes of the absinthe slave. His hands trembled 
habitually, and on his bad days fluttered like leaves. But 
there was still some force in his prematurely aged body, 
still some will in his mind. He was a wreck, but he was 
the wreck of one who had been really a man and accus¬ 
tomed to dominate women. And this he did not forget. 

One evening—it was in May, and the long heats of 
the desert had already set in—Lemaire was away from 
the auberge, shooting near the salt mountain with an 
acquaintance, a colonist who had a small farm not far 
from Biskra, and who had come to spend the night at 
El-Kelf. This man had a history. He had once been 
a hotel-keeper, and had reason to suspect a guest in his 
hotel of having guilty intercourse with his wife. 

One night, having discovered beyond possibility of 
doubt that his suspicions were well founded, he waited 
till the hotel was closed, then made his way to his guest’s 
room, and put three bullets into him as he lay asleep in 
53 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


his bed. For this murder, or act of justice, he got only 
ten months’ imprisonment. But his business as a hotel- 
keeper was ruined. So now he was a small farmer. He 
was also, perhaps, the only real friend Lemaire had in 
Africa, and he came occasionally to spend a night at the 
Retour du Desert. 

Upon this evening of May, Madame Lemaire was 
alone in the inn with the one-eyed servant Hadj pre¬ 
paring supper for the two sportsmen. The flies buzzed 
about under the dusty leaves of the vine, which were un¬ 
stirred by any breeze. The crystals upon the flanks of 
the salt mountain glittered in the sun that was still fiery, 
though not far from its declining. 

Upon the dry, earthen walls of the inn and over the 
stones of the court round which it was built, the lizards 
crept, or rested with eager, glancing patience, as if alert 
for further movement, but waiting for a signal. A mule 
or two stamped in the long stable that was open to the 
court, and a skeleton of a white Kabyle dog slunk to and 
fro searching for scraps with his lips curled back from 
his pointed teeth. 

And Madame Lemaire went slowly about her work with 
the sand-grains in her hair, and the flies buzzing around 
her. 

Nothing had happened. Nothing ever did happen at 
El-Kelf. But for some mysterious reason Madame Le¬ 
maire suddenly felt to-day that her existence in the desert 
had become insupportable. It may have been that Africa, 
gradually draining away the Frenchwoman’s vitality, had 
on this day removed the last little drop of the force that 
had, till now, enabled her to face her life, however dully, 
however wearily. 


54 


THE NOMAD 


It may have been that there was some peculiar and 
unusual heaviness in the air that was generally of a 
feathery lightness. Or the reason may have been mental, 
and Africa may have drawn from this victim’s nature, 
on this particular day, a grain, small as a grain of sand, 
of will-power that was absolutely necessary for the keep¬ 
ing of the woman’s stamina upon its feet. 

However it was, she felt that she collapsed. She did 
not cry. She did not curse. She did not faint, or lie 
down and stare with desperate eyes at the vacant dying 
day. She did not neglect her domestic duties, and was 
even now tearing, with a flat key, the cover from some 
tinned veal and ham for the evening’s supper. But some¬ 
thing within her had abruptly raised its voice. She 
seemed to hear it saying: “I can’t bear any more!” and 
to know that it spoke the truth. No longer could she 
bear it: the African sun on the brown-earth walls, the 
settling of the sand-grains in her hair, the movement of 
the flies about her face, wrinkled permaturely by the per¬ 
petual dry heat and by the desert winds; the brazen sky 
above her, the iron land beneath, the silence—like the 
silence that was before creation, or the monotonous 
sounds that broke it; the mule’s stamp on the stones, the 
barking of the guard-dogs upon the palm roofs of the 
distant houses in the village, the sneering laugh of the 
jackals by night, that whining song of Hadj, as he wagged 
his shaven head over the pipe-bowl into which he pressed 
the keef that was bringing him to madness. 

She could not bear it any more. 

The look in her face scarcely altered. The corners of 
her mouth, long since grown grim, did not droop any 
more than usual. Her thin, hard hands were steady as 
55 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


they did their dreary work. But the woman who had 
resisted somehow during ten terrible years of incom¬ 
parable monotony suddenly died within Marie Lemaire, 
and the girl of Marseilles, Marie Bretelle, shrieked out 
in the middle-aged, haggard body. 

“This fate was not meant for me. I cannot bear it 
any more.” 

Presently the tin which had held the veal and ham was 
empty, save for some bits of opaque jelly that still clung 
round its edges; and Madame Lemaire went over to 
the dimly burning charcoal with a dirty old pan in her 
hand. 

Marie Bretelle was still shrieking out, but Madame Le¬ 
maire must get ready the supper for her absinthe-soaked 
husband, and his friend the murderer from Alfa. 

The sportsmen were late in returning, and Madame 
Lemaire’s task was finished before they came. She had 
nothing more to do, and she came out to the arbour that 
looked upon the road. Here there was an old table 
stained with the lees of wine. About it stood three or 
four rickety chairs. Madame Lemaire sat down— 
dropped down, rather—on one of these, laid her arms 
upon the table, and gazed down the empty road. 

“Mon Dieu!” she said to herself. “Mon Dieu!” She 
beat one hand on the table and said it aloud. 

“Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!” 

She stared up at the vine. The leaves were sandy, 
and she saw insects running over them. She watched 
them. What were they doing? What purpose could 
they have? What purpose could anything have? 

Always the hand tapped, tapped upon the table. 

And Marseilles! It was still there by the sea, crowded, 

56 


THE NOMAD 


gay with life. This was the time when the life began to 
grow turbulent. The cascades were roaring under the 
lifted gardens, where the beasts roamed in their cages. 
The awnings were out over the cafes in that city of 
cafes. She could almost see the coloured edges of stuff 
fluttering in the wind that came from the arbour and from 
the Chateau d’lf. There was a sound of hammering along 
the sea. They were putting up the bathing sheds for the 
season. It would be good to go into the sea. It would 
cool one. 

A beetle dropped from the vine on to the table, close 
to the beating hand. Madame Lemaire started vio¬ 
lently. She got up, and went to stand in the entrance of 
the arbour. Marseilles was gone now. Africa was 
there. 

For ten years she had been looking down the road. 
She looked down it once more. 

It was the wonderful evening hour when Africa seems 
to lift itself toward the light, reluctant to be given to the 
darkness. Very far one could see, and with an almost 
supernatural distinctness. Yet Madame Lemaire strained 
her eyes, as people do at dusk when they strive to pierce 
a veil of gathering darkness. 

What was coming along the road? 

Her gaze travelled onwards over the hard and barren 
plain till it reached the green crops, on and on past the 
tents of the Spahis’ encampment, near which rose a trail 
of smoke into the lucent air; farther still, farther and 
farther, until the whiteness narrowed towards the moun¬ 
tains, and at last was lost to sight. 

And this evening, perhaps because she longed so much 
for something, for anything, there was nothing on the 

57 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 

road. It was a white emptiness under the setting 
sun. 

Then the woman felt frantic, and she beat her hands 
together, and she cried aloud: 

“If the Devil himself would only come along the road 
and ask me to go from this cursed hole of a place, I’d go 
with him! I’d go! I’d go!” 

She repeated it shrilly, making wild gestures with her 
hands towards the desert. Her face was twisted awry. 
She looked just then like a desperate hag of a woman. 

But it was the girl of Marseilles who was crying out 
in her. It was Marie Bretelle who was demanding the 
joys she had flung away in her youth for the sake of a 
handsome face. 

“I’d go! I’d go!” 

The shrill cry went up to the setting sun. But no one 
answered, and nothing darkened the arid whiteness of 
the road that wound across the plain and passed before 
the inn-door. 


2 

Night had fallen when the two sportsmen rode in on 
mules, tired and hungry. Hadj came from his keef to 
take the beasts, Madame Lemaire from her kitchen to 
ask if there were any birds for her to cook. Her hus¬ 
band gave her a string of them, and she turned away 
from him without a word, and went back into the house. 

There was nothing odd in this, but something in his 
wife’s face, seen only for a moment in the darkness of 
the court, had startled Lemaire, and he looked after her 
as if he were inclined to call her back; then said to his 
companion, Jacques Bouvier: 

58 


THE NOMAD 


“Did you see Marie?” 

“Yes. She looks as if she had just stumbled over a 
jackal,” and he laughed. 

Lemaire stood for a minute where he was. Then he 
shouted to Hadj: 

“Hadj ! A—Hadj!” 

The one-eyed keef-smoker came. 

“Who has been here to-day?” 

“No one. A few have passed the door, but no one has 
entered.” 

“Good business!” said Bouvier, shrugging his shoul¬ 
ders. 

“Business!” exclaimed Lemaire, with an oath. “It’s 
a fine business we do here. Another ten years, and we 
shan’t have put by ten sous.” 

“Perhaps that is why madame has such a face to¬ 
night !” 

“We’ll see at supper. Now for an absinthe!” 

The two men walked stiffly into the inn, put their guns 
in a corner, went into the arbour that fronted the desert, 
and sat down by the table. 

“Marie!” bawled Lemaire. 

He struck his flabby fist down upon the wood. 

“Marie, the absinthe!” 

Madame Lemaire heard the hoarse shout in the kitchen, 
and her face went awry again: 

“I’d go! I’d go!” 

She hissed it under her breath. 

“Sacra nom de Dieu! Marie!” 

“V’l e!” 

“The devil! What a voice!” said Bouvier in the arbour. 

Lemaire was half turned in his chair. His hands were 

59 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


slightly shaking, and his large white face, with its angry 
and distressed eyes, looked startled. 

“Who was that?” he said, moving in his chair as if 
he were going to get up. 

“Who? Your wife!” 

“No, it wasn’t!” 

“Well, then-” 

At this moment there was a clink and a rattle, and 
Madame Lemaire came slowly out from the inn, carrying 
a tray with an absinthe bottle, a bottle of water, and 
two thick glasses with china saucers. She set it down 
between the two men. Her husband stared at her like 
one who stares suspiciously at a stranger. 

“Was that you who called out?” he asked. 

“Of course! Who else should it be? Who ever comes 
here?” 

“Madame is a bit sick of El-Kelf,” said Bouvier. 
“That’s what is the matter.” 

Madame Lemaire compressed her lips tightly and said 
nothing. 

Her husband looked more suspicious. 

“Why should she be sick of it? She’s done very well 
with it for ten years,” he said roughly. 

Madame Lemaire turned away and left the arbour. 
She was wearing slippers without heels, and went 
softly. 

The two men sat in silence, looking at each other. A 
breath of wind, the first that had come that day, stole 
from the desert and rustled the leaves of the vine above 
their heads. Lemaire stretched out his trembling hand 
to the absinthe bottle. 

“For God’s sake let’s have a drink!” he said. “There’s 
60 



THE NOMAD 


something about my wife that’s given my blood a turn.” 

“Beat her!” said Bouvier, pushing forward his glass. 
“If you don’t beat them be sure they’ll betray you.” 

His wife’s treachery had set him against all women. 
Lemaire growled something inarticulate. He was think¬ 
ing of the days in Algiers, of their strange and often 
disgraceful existence there. Bouvier knew nothing of 
that. 

“Come on!” he said. 

And he lifted his glass of absinthe to his lips. 

At supper that night Lemaire perpetually watched his 
wife. She seemed to be just as usual. For years there 
had been a sort of sickly weariness upon her face. It 
was there now. For years there had been a dull sound in 
her voice. He heard it to-night. For years she had had 
a poor appetite. She ate little at supper, had her habitual 
manner of swallowing almost with difficulty. Surely she 
was just as usual. 

And yet she was not—she was not! 

After supper the two men returned to the arbour to 
smoke and drink, and Madame Lemaire remained in the 
kitchen to clear away and wash up. 

“Isn’t there something the matter with my wife?” 
asked Lemaire, lighting a thin, black cigar, and settling 
his loose, bulky body in the small chair, with his fat legs 
stretched out, and one foot crossed over the other. “Or 
is it that I’m out of sorts to-night? It seems to me as 
if she were strange.” 

Bouvier was a small, pinched man, with a narrow 
face, evenly red in colour, large ears that stood out from 
his closely shaven head, and hot-looking, prominent brown 
eyes. 

61 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


“Perhaps she’s taken with some Arab,” he said. 

“P’f! She’s dropped all that nonsense. The devil! 
A woman of forty’s an old woman in Africa.” 

Bouvier spat. 

“Isn’t she?” 

“Oh, don’t ask me about women. Young or old, they’re 
always calling the Devil to their elbow.” 

“What for?” 

“To put them up to wickedness. Perhaps your wife’s 
been calling him to-night. You look behind her presently, 
and you may catch a sight of him. He’s always about 
where women are.” 

“Ha, ha, ha!” 

Lemaire laughed mirthlessly. 

“D’you think he’d show himself to me?” 

He emptied his glass. Bouvier suddenly looked ter¬ 
rible—looked like the man who had put three bullets into 
his sleeping guest. 

“How did I know?” he said. 

He leaned across the table towards Lemaire. 

“How did I know?” he repeated in a low voice. 

“What—when your wife-” 

“Yes. They didn’t let me see anything. They were 
too sharp. No; it was one night I saw him, with his 
mouth at her ear, coming in behind her through the 
door like a shadow. There!” 

He sat back with his hands on his knees. Lemaire 
stared at him again. 

Again the wind rustled furtively through the diseased 
vine-leaves of the arbour. 

“It was then that I got out my revolver and charged 
it,” continued Bouvier, in a less mysterious voice, as of 
62 



THE NOMAD 


one returned to practical life. “For I knew she’d been 
up to some villainy. Pass the bottle!” . . . 

“Pass the bottle! . . . Why don’t you pass the 
bottle?” 

“Pardon!” 

Lemaire pushed the bottle over to his friend. 

“What’s the matter with you to-night?” 

“Nothing. You mean to say . . . why d’you talk 
such nonsense? D’you think I’m a fool to be taken in 
by rubbish like that?” 

“Well, then, why did you sit just as if you’d seen 
him?” 

“I’m a bit tired to-night, that’s what it is. We went 
a long way. The wine’ll pull me together.” 

He poured out another glass. 

“You don’t mean to say,” he continued, “you believe 
in the Devil?” 

“Don’t you?” 

“No.” 

“Why not?” 

“Why not! Why should I? Nobody does—me, 
I mean. That sort of thing is all very well for 
women.” 

Bouvier said nothing, but sat with his arms on the 
table, staring out towards the desert. He looked at the 
empty road just in front of him, let his eyes travel along 
until it disappeared into the night. 

“I say, that sort of thing is all very well for women,” 
repeated Lemaire. 

“I hear you.” 

“But I want to know whether you don’t think the 


same. 


63 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


“As you?” 

“Yes; to be sure.” 

“I might have done once.” 

“But you don’t now?” 

“There’s a devil in the desert; that’s certain.” 

“Why?” 

“Because I tell you he came out of the desert to turn 
my wife wrong.” 

“Then you weren’t joking?” 

“Not I. It’s as true as that I went and charged my 
revolver, because I saw what I told you. Here’s Madame 
coming out to join us.” 

Lemaire shifted heavily and abruptly in his chair. 

“Hallo!” he said, in a brutal tone of voice. “What’s 
up with you to-night?” 

As he spoke he stared hard at his wife’s shoulder, 
just by her ear. 

“Nothing. What are you looking at? There 
isn’t-” 

She put up her hand quickly to her shoulder and felt 
over her dress. 

“Ugh!” She shook herself. “I thought you’d seen 
a scorpion on me.” 

Bouvier, whose red face seemed to be deepening in 
colour under the influence of the red Algerian wine, 
burst out laughing. 

“It wasn’t a scorpion he was looking for,” he ex¬ 
claimed. His thin body shook with mirth till his chair 
creaked under him. 

“It wasn’t a scorpion,” he repeated. 

“What was it, then?” said Madame Lemaire. 

She looked from one man to the other—from the one 

64 


THE NOMAD 


who was strange in his laughter, to the other who was 
even stranger in his gravity. 

“What have you been saying about me?” she said, 
with a flare-up of suspicion. 

“Well,” said Bouvier, recovering himself a little, “if 
you must know, we were talking about the Devil.” 

The woman stared and gave the table a shake. Some 
of her husband’s wine was spilled over it. 

“The Devil take you!” he bawled with sudden fury. 

“I only wish he would!” 

The two men jumped back as if a viper of the sands 
had suddenly reared up its thin head between them. 

“I only wish he would!” 

It was Marie Bretelle who had spoken, the girl of 
Marseilles, who still lived in the body of Marie Lemaire. 
But it was Marie Lemaire from whom the two men 
shrank away—Marie Lemaire changed, startling, terrible, 
her haggard face furious with expression, her thin hands 
clutching at the edge of the table, from which the wine- 
bottle had fallen, to be smashed at their feet. 

For a moment there was a dead silence succeeding that 
second shrill cry. Then Lemaire scrambled up heavily 
from his chair. 

“What do you mean?” he stammered. “What do you 
mean ?” 

And then she told him, like a fury, and with the words 
which had surely been accumulating in her mind, like 
water behind a dam, for ten years. She told him what 
she had wanted, and what she had had. And when at 
last she had finished telling him, she stood for a minute, 
making mouths at him in silence, as if she still had some¬ 
thing to say, some final word of summing up. 

65 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


“Stop that!” 

It was Lemaire who spoke; and as he spoke he thrust 
out one of his white, shaking hands to cover that night¬ 
mare mouth. But she beat his hand down, and screamed, 
with the gesture. 

“And if the Devil himself would come along the road 
to fetch me from this cursed place, I’d go with him! 
D’you hear? I’d go with him! I’d go with him!” 

When the scream died away, one-eyed Hadj was stand¬ 
ing at the entrance to the arbour. Madame Lemaire felt 
that he was there, turned round, and saw him. 

“I’d go with him if he was an Arab,” she said, but 
almost muttering now, for her voice had suddenly failed 
her, though her passion was still red-hot. “Even the 
Arabs—they’re better than you, absinthe-soaked, do- 
nothing Roumis, who sit and drink, drink-” 

Her voice cracked, went into a whisper, disappeared. 
She thrust out her hand, swept the glasses off the table 
to follow the bottle, turned, and went out of the arbour 
softly on her slippered feet. 

And one-eyed Hadj stood there laughing, for he under¬ 
stood French very well, although he was half mad with 
keef. 

“She’d go with an Arab!” he repeated. “She’d go 
with an Arab!” And then he saw his master. 

The two Frenchmen sat staring at one another across 
the empty table under the shivering vine-leaves, which 
were now stirred continually by the wind of night. Le- 
maire’s large face had gone a dusky grey. About his 
eyes there was a tinge of something that was almost lead 
colour. His loose mouth had dropped, and the lower lip 
disclosed his decayed teeth. His hands, laid upon the 
66 



THE NOMAD 


table as if for support, shook and jumped, were never 
still even for a second. 

Bouvier was almost purple. Veins stood out about 
his forehead. The blood had gone to his ears and to 
his eyes. Now he leaned across to Lemaire. 

“Beat her!” he said. “Beat her for that! Hadj heard 
her. If you don’t beat her, the Arabs-” 

But before he had finished the sentence Lemaire had 
got up, with a wild gesture of his shaking hand, and gone 
unsteadily into the house. 

That night Madame Lemaire suffered at the hands of 
her husband, while Bouvier and Hadj listened in the 
darkness of the court. 


3 

It was drawing towards evening on the following 
day, and Madame Lemaire was quite alone in the inn. 
Hadj had gone to the village for some more keef, and 
Lemaire and Bouvier had set out together in the morn¬ 
ing for Batna. 

So she was quite alone. Her face was bruised and 
discoloured near the right eye. Her head ached. She 
felt immensely listless. To-day there was no activity in 
her misery. It seemed a slow-witted, lethargic thing, 
undeserving even of respect. 

There were no customers. There was nothing to do, 
absolutely nothing. She went heavily into the arbour, 
and sank down upon a chair. At first she sat upright. 
But presently she spread her arms out upon the table, 
and laid her discoloured face on them, and remained so 
for a long time. 


67 



TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


Any traveller, passing by on the road from the desert, 
would have thought that she was asleep. But she was 
not asleep. Nor had she slept all night. It is not easy 
to sleep after such punishment as she had received. 

And no traveller passed by. 

The flies, finding that the woman kept quite still, settled 
upon her face, her hair, her hands, cleaned themselves, 
stretched their legs and wings, went to and fro busily 
upon her. She never moved to drive them away. 

She was not thinking just then. She was only feeling 
—feeling how she was alone, feeling that this enormous 
sun-dried land was about her, stretching away to right and 
left of her, behind her and before, feeling that in all this 
enormous, sun-dried land there was nobody who wanted 
her, nobody thinking of her, nobody coming towards her 
to take her away into a different life, into a life that she 
could bear. 

All this she was dully feeling. 

Perfectly still were the diseased vine-leaves above her 
head, motionless as she was. On them the insects went 
to and fro, actively leading their mysterious lives, as the 
flies went to and fro on her. 

For a long time she remained thus. All the white 
road was empty before her as far as eye could see. No 
trail of smoke went up by the growing crops beside the 
distant tents of the Spahis. It seemed as if man had 
abandoned Africa, leaving only one of God’s creatures 
there, this woman who leaned across the discoloured table 
with her bruised face hidden on her arms. 

The hour before sunset approached, the miraculous 
hour of the day, when Africa seems to lift itself towards 
the light that will soon desert it, as if it could not bear 
68 


THE NOMAD 


to let the glory go, as if it would not consent to be hidden 
in the night. Upon the salt mountain the crystals glit¬ 
tered. 

The details of the land began to live as they had not 
lived all day. The wonderful clearness came, in which 
all things seem filled with supernatural meaning. And, 
even in the dullness of her misery, habit took hold of 
Madame Lemaire. 

She lifted her head from her arms, and she stared down 
the long white road. Her gaze travelled. It started from 
the patch of glaring white before the arbour, and it went 
away like one who goes to a tryst. It went down the 
road, and on, and on. It reached the green of the crops. 
It passed the Spahis’ tents. It moved towards the dis¬ 
tant mountains that hid the plains and the palms of 
Biskra. 

The flies buzzed into the air. 

Madame Lemaire had got up from her seat. With her 
hands laid flat upon the table she stared at the thread of 
white that was the limit of her vision. Then she lifted 
her hands and curved them, and put them above her eyes 
to form a shade. And then she moved and came out to 
the entrance of the arbour. 

She had seen a black speck upon the road. 

There was dust around it. As so often before she 
asked herself the question: “Who is it coming towards 
the inn from the desert?” But to-day she asked herself 
the question as she had never asked it before, with a sort 
of violence, with a passionate eagerness, with a leaping 
expectation. And she stepped right out into the road, 
as if she would go and meet the traveller, would hasten 
with stretched-out hands as to some welcome friend. 

69 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


The sun dropped its burning rays upon her hair, and 
she realised her folly, took her hands from her eyes, and 
laughed to herself. Then she went back to the arbour 
and stood by the table waiting. Slowly—very slowly it 
seemed to Madame Lemaire—the black speck grew larger 
on the white. But there was very much dust to-day, and 
always the misty cloud was round it, stirred up by— 
was it a camel’s padding feet, or the hoofs of a horse, 
or—? She could not tell yet, but soon she would be able 
to tell. 

Now it was approaching the watered land, was not 
far from the Spahis’ tents. And a great fear came upon 
her that it might turn aside to them, that it might be 
perhaps a Spahi riding home from his patrol of the desert. 
She felt that she could not bear to be alone any longer; 
that if she could not see and speak to someone before 
sunset she must go mad. 

The traveller passed before the Spahis’ camp without 
turning aside; and now the dust was less, and Madame 
Lemaire could see that it was a Nomad mounted on a 
camel. 

With a smothered exclamation she hurried into the inn. 
A sudden resolve possessed her. She would prepare a 
couscous. And then, if the Nomad desired to pass on 
without entering the inn, she would detain him. 

She would offer him a couscous for nothing, only she 
must have company. Whoever the stranger was, how¬ 
ever poor, however filthy, ragged, hideous, or even ter¬ 
rible, he must stay a while at the inn, distract her thoughts 
for an instant. 

Without that she would go mad. 

Quickly she began her preparations. There was time. 

70 


THE NOMAD 


He could not be here for twenty minutes yet, and the 
meal for a couscous was all ready. She had only to- 

She moved frantically about the kitchen. 

Twenty minutes later she heard the peevish roar of a 
camel from the road, and ran out to meet the Nomad, 
carrying the couscous. As she came into the arbour she 
noticed that it was already dark outside. 

The night had fallen suddenly. 

That night, as Lemaire and Bouvier were nearing the 
inn, riding slowly upon their mules, they heard before 
them in the darkness the angry snarling of a camel. 

Almost immediately it died away. 

“Madame has company,” said Bouvier. “There’s a 
customer at the Retour du Desert.” 

“Some damned Arab!” said Lemaire. “Come for a 
coffee or a couscous. Much good that’ll do us!” 

They rode on in silence. When they reached the inn, 
the road before it was empty. 

“Mai foi,” said Bouvier. “Nobody here! The camel 
was getting up, then, and Madame is alone again.” 

“Marie!” called Lemaire. “Marie! The absinthe!” 

There was no reply. 

“Marie! Nom d’un chien! Marie! The absinthe! 
Marie!” 

He let his heavy body down from the mule. 

“Where the devil is she? Marie! Marie!” 

He went into the arbour, stumbled over something, 
and uttered a curse. 

In reply to it there was a shrill and prolonged howl 
from the court. 

“What is it? What’s the dog up to?” said Bouvier, 
71 



TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


whipping out his revolver and following Lemaire. “The 
table knocked over! What’s up? D’you think there’s 
anything wrong?” 

The Kabyle dog howled again, slunk into the arbour 
from the court, and pressed itself against Lemaire’s legs. 
He gave it a kick in the ribs that sent it yelping into the 
night. 

“Marie! Marie!” 

There was the anger of alarm in his voice now; but 
no one answered his call. 

Walking furtively, the two men passed through the 
doorway into the kitchen. Lemaire struck a match, lit 
a candle, took it in his hand, and they searched the inn, 
and the court, then returned to the arbour. In the arbour, 
close to the overturned table, they found a broken bowl, 
with a couscous scattered over the earth beside it. Sev¬ 
eral vine-leaves were trodden into the ground near by. 

“Someone’s been here,” said Lemaire, staring at 
Bouvier in the candlelight, which flickered in his angry 
and distressed eyes. “Someone’s been. She was bring¬ 
ing him a couscous. See here!” 

He pointed with his foot. 

Bouvier laughed uneasily. 

“Perhaps,” he said—“perhaps it was the Devil come 
for her. You remember! She said last night, if he 
came, she’d go with him.” 

The candle dropped from Lemaire’s shaking hand. 

“Damn you! Why d’you talk like that?” he exclaimed 
furiously. She must be somewhere about. Let’s have 
an absinthe. Perhaps she’s gone to the village.” 

They had an absinthe and searched once more. 

Presently Hadj, who was half mad with keef, joined 
72 


THE NOMAD 


them. The rumour of what was going forward had got 
about in the village; and other Arabs glided noiselessly 
through the night to share in the absinthe and the quest, 
for that night Lemaire forgot to lock up the bottle. 

But the hostess of the inn at El-Kelf has not been seen 
again. 


THE CRUCIFIXION 
OF THE OUTCAST 

By W. B. YEATS 

A MAN, with thin brown hair and a pale face, 
half ran, half walked along the road that wound 
from the south to the Town of the Shelly River. 
Many called him Cumhal, the son of Cormac, and many 
called him the Swift, Wild Horse; and he was a gleeman, 
and he wore a short parti-coloured doublet, and had 
pointed shoes, and a bulging wallet. Also he was of the 
blood of the Ernaans, and his birth-place was the Field 
of Gold; but his eating and sleeping places were the four 
provinces of Eri, and his abiding place was not upon the 
ridge of the earth. His eyes strayed from the Abbey 
tower of the White Friars and the town battlements to a 
row of crosses which stood out against the sky upon a hill 
a little to the eastward of the town, and he clenched his 
fist, and shook it at the crosses. He knew they were not 
empty, for the birds were fluttering about them; and he 
thought, how, as like as not, just such another vagabond 
as himself was hanged on one of them; and he muttered; 
“If it were hanging or bow-stringing, or stoning or be¬ 
heading, it would be bad enough. But to have the birds 
pecking your eyes and the wolves eating your feet! I 
would that the red wind of the Druids had withered in 
his cradle the soldier of Dathi, who brought the tree of 
death out of barbarous lands, or that the lightning, when 

From The Secret Rose, by W. B. Yeats. Copyright, 1914, by the 
Macmillan Company. 


74 



CRUCIFIXION OF THE OUTCAST 

it smote Dathi at the foot of the mountain, had smitten 
him also, or that his grave had been dug by the green¬ 
haired and green-toothed merrows deep at the roots of 
the deep sea.” 

While he spoke, he shivered from head to foot, and 
the sweat came out upon his face, and he knew not why, 
for he had looked upon many crosses. He passed over two 
hills and under the battlemented gate, and then round by 
a left-hand way to the door of the Abbey. It was studded 
with great nails, and when he knocked at it, he roused 
the lay brother who was the porter, and of him he asked 
a place in the guest-house. Then the lay brother took 
a glowing turf on a shovel, and led the way to a big and 
naked outhouse strewn with dirty rushes: and lighted a 
rush-candle fixed between two of the stones of the wall, 
and set the glowing turf upon the hearth and gave him 
two unlighted sods and a wisp of straw, and showed him 
a blanket hanging from a nail, and a shelf with a loaf 
of bread and a jug of water, and a tub in a far corner. 
Then the lay brother left him and went back to his place 
by the door. And Cumhal the son of Cormac began to 
blow upon the glowing turf, that he might light the two 
sods and the wisp of straw; but his blowing profited him 
nothing, for the sods and the straw were damp. So he 
took off his pointed shoes, and drew the tub out of the 
corner with the thought of washing the dust of the high¬ 
way from his feet; but the water was so dirty that he 
could not see the bottom. He was very hungry, for he 
had not eaten all that day; so he did not waste much 
anger upon the tub, but took up the black loaf, and bit 
into it, and then spat out the bite, for the bread was hard 
and mouldy. Still he did not give way to his wrath, for 
75 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


he had not drunken these many hours; having a hope of 
heath beer or wine at his day’s end, he had left the brooks 
untasted, to make his supper the more delightful. Now he 
put the jug to his lips, but he flung it from him straight¬ 
way, for the water was bitter and ill-smelling. Then he 
gave the jug a kick, so that it broke against the opposite 
wall, and he took down the blanket to wrap it about him 
for the night. But no sooner did he touch it than it was 
alive with skipping fleas. At this, beside himself with 
anger, he rushed to the door of the guest-house, but the 
lay brother, being well accustomed to such outcries, had 
locked it on the outside; so Cumhal emptied the tub and 
began to beat the door with it, till the lay brother came 
to the door, and asked what ailed him, and why he woke 
him out of sleep. “What ails me!” shouted Cumhal, 
“are not the sods as wet as the sands of the Three Head¬ 
lands ? and are not the fleas in the blanket as many as the 
waves of the sea and as lively? and is not the bread as 
hard as the heart of a lay brother who has forgotten God? 
and is not the water in the jug as bitter and as ill-smelling 
as his soul? and is not the foot-water the colour that 
shall be upon him when he has been charred in the Un¬ 
dying Fires?” The lay brother saw that the lock was 
fast, and went back to his niche, for he was too sleepy 
to talk with comfort. And Cumhal went on beating at 
the door, and presently he heard the lay brother’s foot 
once more, and cried out at him, “O cowardly and tyran¬ 
nous race of friars, persecutors of the bard and the glee- 
man, haters of life and joy! O race that does not draw 
the sword and tell the truth! O race that melts the bones 
of the people with cowardice and with deceit!” 

“Gleeman,” said the lay brother, “I also make rhymes; 

76 


CRUCIFIXION OF THE OUTCAST 


I make many while I sit in my niche by the door, and I 
sorrow to hear the bards railing upon the friars. Brother, 
I would sleep, and therefore I make known to you that 
it is the head of the monastery, our gracious Coarb, who 
orders all things concerning the lodging of travellers.” 

“You may sleep,” said Cumhal, “I will sing a bard’s 
curse on the Coarb.” And he set the tub outside down 
under the window, and stood upon it, and began to sing 
in a very loud voice. The singing awoke the Coarb, so 
that he sat up in bed and blew a silver whistle until 
the lay brother came to him. “I cannot get a wink of 
sleep with that noise,” said the Coarb. “What is hap¬ 
pening?” 

“It is a gleeman,” said the lay brother, “who com¬ 
plains of the sods, of the bread, of the water in the jug, 
of the foot-water, and of the blanket. And now he is 
singing a bard’s curse upon you, O brother Coarb, and 
upon your father and your mother, and your grandfather 
and your grandmother, and upon all your relations.” 

“Is he cursing in rhyme?” 

“He is cursing in rhyme, and with two assonances in 
every line of his curse.” 

The Coarb pulled his night-cap off and crumbled it 
in his hands, and the circular brown patch of hair in the 
middle of his bald head looked like an island in the 
midst of a pond, for in Connaught they had not yet 
abandoned the ancient tonsure for the style then coming 
into use. “If we do not somewhat,” he said, “he will 
teach his curses to the children in the street, and the girls 
spinning at the doors, and to the robbers on the mountain 
of Gulben.” 

“Shall I go then,” said the other, “and give him dry 

77 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


sods, a fresh loaf, clean water in a jug, clean foot-water, 
and a new blanket, and make him swear by the blessed 
St. Benignus, and by the sun and moon, that no bond be 
lacking, not to tell his rhymes to the children in the 
street, and the girls spinning at the doors, and the rob¬ 
bers on the mountain of Gulben? ,, 

“Neither our blessed Patron nor the sun and the moon 
would avail at all,” said the Coarb: “for to-morrow or 
the next day the mood to curse would come upon him, 
or a pride in those rhymes would move him, and he 
would teach his lines to the children, and the girls, and 
the robbers. Or else he would tell another of his craft 
how he fared in the guest-house, and he in his turn 
would begin to curse, and my name would wither. For 
learn there is no steadfastness of purpose upon the roads, 
but only under roofs, and between four walls. There¬ 
fore I bid you go and awaken Brother Kevin, Brother 
Dove, Brother Little Wolf, Brother Bald Patrick, Brother 
Bald Brandon, Brother James and Brother Peter. And 
they shall take the man, and bind him with ropes, and 
dip him in the river that he may cease to sing. And in 
the morning, lest this but make him curse the louder, 
we will crucify him.” 

“The crosses are all full,” said the lay brother. 

“Then we must make another cross. If we do not 
make an end of him another will, for who can eat and 
sleep in peace while men like him are going about the 
world? Ill should we stand before blessed St. Benignus, 
and sour would be his face when he comes to judge us at 
the Last Day, were we to spare an enemy of his when 
we had him under our thumb! Brother, the bards and 
the gleemen are an evil race, ever cursing and ever stir- 

78 


CRUCIFIXION OF THE OUTCAST 

ring up the people, and immoral and immoderate in all 
things, and heathen in their hearts, always longing after 
the Son of Lir, and Angus, and Bridget, and the Dagda, 
and Dana the Mother, and all the false gods of the old 
days; always making poems in praise of those kings 
and queens of the demons, Finvaragh of the Hill in the 
Plain, and Red Aodh of the Hill of the Shee, and Cleena 
of the Wave, and Eiveen of the Grey Rock, and him they 
call Don of the Vats of the Sea; and railing against God 
and Christ and the blessed Saints.” While he was speak¬ 
ing he crossed himself, and when he had finished he drew 
the night-cap over his ears, to shut out the noise, and 
closed his eyes, and composed himself to sleep. 

The lay brother found Brother Kevin, Brother Dove, 
Brother Little Wolf, Brother Bald Patrick, Brother Bald 
Brandon, Brother James and Brother Peter sitting up in 
bed, and he made them get up. Then they bound Cum- 
hal, and they dragged him to the river, and they dipped 
him in at the place which was afterwards called Buckley’s 
Ford. 

“Gleeman,” said the lay brother, as they led him back 
to the guest-house, “why do you ever use the wit which 
God has given you to make blasphemous and immoral 
tales and verses? For such is the way of your craft. I 
have, indeed, many such tales and verses well nigh by 
rote, and so I know that I speak true! And why do 
you praise with rhyme those demons, Finvaragh, Red 
Aodh, Cleena, Eiveen and Don? I, too, am a man of 
great wit and learning, but I ever glorify our gracious 
Coarb, and Benignus our Patron, and the princes of the 
province. My soul is decent and orderly, but yours is 
like the wind among the salley gardens. I said what I 
79 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


could for you, being also a man of many thoughts, but 
who could help such a one as you?” 

“My soul, friend,” answered the gleeman, “is indeed 
like the wind, and it blows me to and fro, and up and 
down, and puts many things into my mind and out of my 
mind, and therefore am I called the Swift, Wild Horse.” 
And he spoke no more that night, for his teeth were chat¬ 
tering with the cold. 

The Coarb and the friars came to him in the morning, 
and bade him get ready to be crucified, and led him out 
of the guest-house. And while he still stood upon the 
step a flock of great grass-barnacles passed high above 
him with clanking cries. He lifted his arms to them and 
said, “O great grass-barnacles, tarry a little, and mayhap 
my soul will travel with you to the waste places of the 
shore and to the ungovernable sea!” At the gate a 
crowd of beggars gathered about them, being come there 
to beg from any traveller or pilgrim who might have 
spent the night in the guest-house. The Coarb and the 
friars led the gleeman to a place in the woods at some 
distance, where many straight young trees were growing, 
and they made him cut one down and fashion it to the 
right length, while the beggars stood round them in a 
ring, talking and gesticulating. The Coarb then bade 
him cut off another and shorter piece of wood, and nail 
it upon the first. So there was his cross for him; and 
they put it upon his shoulder, for his crucifixion was to 
be on the top of the hill where the others were. A half- 
mile on the way he asked them to stop and see him juggle 
for them: for he knew, he said, all the tricks of Angus 
the Subtle-Hearted. The old friars were for pressing 
on, but the young friars would see him: so he did many 
80 


CRUCIFIXION OF THE OUTCAST 


wonders for them, even to the drawing of live frogs 
out of his ears. But after a while they turned on him, 
and said his tricks were dull and a shade unholy, and set 
the cross on his shoulders again. Another half-mile on 
the way, and he asked them to stop and hear him jest for 
them, for he knew, he said, all the jests of Conan the Bald, 
upon whose back a sheep’s wool grew. And the young 
friars, when they had heard his merry tales, again bade 
him take up his cross, for it ill became them to listen to 
such follies. Another half-mile on the way, he asked 
them to stop and hear him sing the story of White- 
Breasted Deirdre, and how she endured many sorrows, 
and how the sons of Usna died to serve her. And the 
young friars were mad to hear him, but when he had 
ended, they grew angry, and beat him for waking for¬ 
gotten longings in their hearts. So they set the cross 
upon his back, and hurried him to the hill. 

When he was come to the top, they took the cross 
from him, and began to dig a hole to stand it in, while 
the beggars gathered round, and talked among them¬ 
selves. “I ask a favour before I die,” says Cumhal. 

“We will grant you no more delays,” says the Coarb. 

“I ask no more delays, for I have drawn the sword, 
and told the truth, and lived my vision and am content.” 

“Would you then confess?” 

“By sun and moon, not I; I ask but to be let eat the 
food I carry in my wallet. I carry food in my wallet 
whenever I go upon a journey, but I do not taste of it 
unless I am well-nigh starved. I have not eaten now 
these two days.” 

“You may eat, then,” says the Coarb, and he turned 
to help the friars dig the hole. 

81 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


The gleeman took a loaf and some strips of cold fried 
bacon out of his wallet and laid them upon the ground. 
“I will give a tithe to the poor,” says he, and he cut a 
tenth part from the loaf and the bacon. “Who among 
you is the poorest ?” And thereupon was a great clamour, 
for the beggars began the history of their sorrows and 
their poverty, and their yellow faces swayed like the 
Shelly River when the floods have filled it with water 
from the bogs. 

He listened for a little, and, says he, “I am myself 
the poorest, for I have travelled the bare road, and by 
the glittering footsteps of the sea; and the tattered doublet 
of parti-coloured cloth upon my back, and the torn 
pointed shoes upon my feet have ever irked me, because 
of the towered city full of noble raiment which was in 
my heart. And I have been the more alone upon the 
roads and by the sea, because I heard in my heart the 
rustling of the rose-bordered dress of her who is more 
subtle than Angus, the Subtle-Hearted, and more full 
of the beauty of laughter than Conan the Bald, and more 
full of the wisdom of tears than White-Breasted Deirdre, 
and more lovely than a bursting dawn to them that are 
lost in the darkness. Therefore, I award the tithe to my¬ 
self; but yet, because I am done with all things, I give 
it unto you.” 

So he flung the bread and the strips of bacon among 
the beggars, and they fought with many cries until the 
last scrap was eaten. But meanwhile the friars nailed 
the gleeman to his cross, and set it upright in the hole, 
and shovelled the earth in at the foot, and trampled it 
level and hard. So then they went away, but the beg¬ 
gars stared on, sitting round the cross. But when the 
82 


CRUCIFIXION OF THE OUTCAST 


sun was sinking, they also got up to go, for the air was 
getting chilly. And as soon as they had gone a little 
way, the wolves, who had been showing themselves on 
the edge of a neighbouring coppice, came nearer, and the 
birds wheeled closer and closer. “Stay, outcasts, yet a 
little while,” the crucified one called in a weak voice to 
the beggars, “and keep the beasts and the birds from 
me.” But the beggars were angry because he had called 
them outcasts, so they threw stones and mud at him, and 
went their way. Then the wolves gathered at the foot 
of the cross, and the birds lighted all at once upon his 
head and arms and shoulders, and began to peck at him, 
and the wolves began to eat his feet. “Outcasts,” he 
moaned, “have you also turned against the outcast?” 


THE DRUMS OF KAIRWAN 


By the Marquess CURZON of KEDLESTON 


W HEN the appointed hour arrived, I presented 
myself at the mosque, which is situated out¬ 
side the city walls of Kairwan, not far from 
the Bab-el-Djuluddin, or Tanners’ Gate. Passing 
through an open courtyard into the main building, I was 
received with a dignified salaam by the sheik, who forth¬ 
with led me to a platform or divan at the upper end 
of the central space. This was surmounted by a ribbed 
and white-washed dome, and was separated from two 
side aisles by rows of marble columns with battered capi¬ 
tals, dating from the Empire of Rome. Between the 
arches of the roof small and feeble lamps—mere lighted 
wicks floating on dingy oil in cups of coloured glass— 
ostrich eggs, and gilt balls were suspended from wooden 
beams. From the cupola in the centre hung a dilapidated 
chandelier in which flickered a few miserable candles. In 
one of the side aisles a plastered tomb was visible behind 
an iron lattice. The mise en scene was unprepossessing 
and squalid. 

My attention was next turned to the dramatis personae. 
Upon the floor in the centre beneath the dome sat the 
musicians, ten or a dozen in number, cross-legged, the 
chief presiding upon a stool at the head of the circle. 
I observed no instrument save the darabookah, or earthen 

From Tales of Travel, by The Marquess Curzon of Kedleston. 
Copyright, 1923, by George H. Doran Company. 

84 



THE DRUMS OF KAIRWAN 


drum, and a number of tambours, the skins of which, 
stretched tightly across the frames, gave forth, when 
struck sharply by the fingers, a hollow and resonant note. 
The rest of the orchestra was occupied by the chorus. 
So far no actors were visible. The remainder of the 
floor, both under the dome and in the aisles, was thickly 
covered with seated and motionless figures, presenting 
in the fitful light a weird and fantastic picture. In all 
there must have been over a hundred persons, all males, 
in the mosque. 

Presently the sheik gave the signal for commencement, 
and in a moment burst forth the melancholy chant of the 
Arab voices and the ceaseless droning of the drums. The 
song was not what we should call singing, but a plaintive 
and quavering wail, pursued in a certain cadence, now 
falling to a moan, now terminating in a shriek, but always 
pitiful, piercing and inexpressibly sad. The tambours, 
which were struck like the keyboard of a piano, by the 
outstretched fingers of the hand, and, occasionally, when 
a louder note was required, by the thumb, kept up a 
monotonous refrain in the background. From time to 
time, at moments of greater stress, they were brandished 
high in the air and beaten with all the force of fingers and 
thumb combined. Then the noise was imperious and 
deafening. 

Among the singers, one grizzled and bearded veteran, 
with a strident and nasal intonation, surpassed his fel¬ 
lows. He observed the time with grotesque reflections of 
his body; his eyes were fixed and shone with religious 
zeal. 

The chant proceeded, and the figures of the singers, 
as they became more and more excited, rocked to and 

85 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


fro. More people poured in at the doorway, and the 
building was now quite full. I began to wonder whether 
the musicians were also to be the performers, or when 
the latter would make their appearance. 

Suddenly a line of four or five Arabs formed itself in 
front of the entrance on far side of the orchestra, and 
exactly opposite the bench on which I was sitting. They 
joined hands, the right of each clasped in the left of his 
neighbour, and began a lurching, swaying motion with 
their bodies and feet. At first they appeared simply to 
be marking time, first with one foot and then with the 
other; but the movement was gradually communicated to 
every member of their bodies; and from the crown of 
the head to the soles of the feet they were presently keep¬ 
ing time with the music in convulsive jerks and leaps 
and undulations, the music itself being regulated by the 
untiring orchestra of the drums. 

This mysterious row of bobbing figures seemed to 
exercise an irresistible fascination over the spectators. 
Every moment one or other of these left his place to join 
its ranks. They pushed their way into the middle, sever¬ 
ing the chain for an instant, or joined themselves on to 
the ends. The older men appeared to have a right to the 
centre, the boys and children—for there were youngsters 
present not more than seven or eight years old—were 
on the wings. Thus the line ever lengthened; originally 
it consisted of three or four, presently it was ten or 
twelve, anon it was twenty-five or thirty, and before the 
self-torturings commenced there were as many as forty 
human figures stretching right across the building, and 
all rocking backwards and forwards in grim and un¬ 
graceful unison. Even the spectators who kept their 
86 


THE DRUMS OF KAIRWAN 


places could not resist the contagion; as they sat there 
they unconsciously kept time with their heads and shoul¬ 
ders, and one child swung his little head this way and 
that with a fury that threatened to separate it from his 
body. 

Meanwhile, the music had been growing in intensity, 
the orchestra sharing the excitement, which they com¬ 
municated. The drummers beat their tambours with 
redoubled force, lifting them high above their heads and 
occasionally, at some extreme pitch, tossing them aloft 
and catching them again as they fell. Sometimes in the 
exaltation of frenzy they started spasmodically to their 
feet and then sank back into their original position. But 
ever and without a pause continued the insistent accom¬ 
paniment of the drums. 

And now the oscillating line in front of the doorway 
for the first time found utterance. As they leaped high 
on one foot, alternately kicking out the other, as their 
heads wagged to and fro and their bodies quivered with 
the muscular strain, they cried aloud in praise of Allah. 
La ilaha ill Allah! (There is no God but Allah)—this was 
the untiring burden of their strain. And then came Ya 
Allah! (O God), and sometimes Ya Kahhar! (O aveng¬ 
ing God), Ya Hakk! (O just God), while each burst 
of clamorous appeal culminated in an awful shout of 
Ya Hoo! (O Him). 

The rapidity and vehemence of their gesticulations was 
now appalling; their heads swung backwards and for¬ 
wards till their foreheads almost touched their breasts, 
and their scalps smote against their backs. Sweat poured 
from their faces; they panted for breath; and the excla¬ 
mations burst from their mouths in a thick and stertorous 

87 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


murmur. Suddenly, and without warning, the first phase 
of the zikr ceased, and the actors stood gasping, shaking, 
and dripping with perspiration. 

After a few seconds’ respite the performance recom¬ 
menced, and shortly waxed more furious than ever. The 
worshippers seemed to be gifted with an almost super¬ 
human strength and energy. As they flung themselves 
to and fro, at one moment their upturned faces gleamed 
with a sickly polish under the flickering lamps, at the 
next their turbaned heads all but brushed the floor. Their 
eyes started from the sockets; the muscles on their necks 
and the veins on their foreheads stood out like knotted 
cords. One old man fell out of the ranks, breathless, 
spent, and foaming. His place was taken by another, 
and the tumultuous orgy went on. 

Presently, as the ecstasy approached its height and 
the fully initiated became melboos or possessed, they 
broke from the stereotyped litany into domoniacal grin¬ 
ning and ferocious and bestial cries. These writhing and 
contorted objects were no longer rational human beings, 
but savage animals, caged brutes howling madly in the 
delirium of hunger or of pain. They growled like bears, 
they barked like jackals, they roared like lions, they 
laughed like hyaenas; and ever and anon from the seething 
rank rose a diabolical shriek, like the scream of a dying 
horse, or the yell of a tortured fiend. And steadily the 
while in the background resounded the implacable rever¬ 
beration of the drums. 

The climax was now reached; the requisite pitch of 
cataleptic inebriation had been obtained, and the rites of 
Aissa were about to begin. From the crowd at the door 
a wild figure broke forth, tore off his upper clothing till 
88 


THE DRUMS OF KAIRWAN 

he was naked to the waist, and, throwing away his fez, 
bared a head close-shaven save for one long and di¬ 
shevelled lock that, springing from the scalp, fell over his 
forehead like some grisly and funereal plume. A long 
knife, somewhat resembling a cutlass, was handed to him 
by the sheik, who had risen to his feet, and who directed 
the phenomena that ensued. Waving it wildly above his 
head and protruding the forepart of his figure, the fa¬ 
natic brought it down blow after blow against his bared 
stomach, and drew it savagely to and fro against the 
unprotected skin. There showed the marks of a long 
and livid weal, but no blood spurted from the gash. In 
the intervals between the strokes he ran swiftly from one 
side to the other of the open space, taking long stealthy 
strides like a panther about to spring, and seemingly so 
powerless over his own movements that he knocked blindly 
up against those who stood in his way, nearly upsetting 
them with the violence of the collision. 

The prowess or the piety of this ardent devotee proved 
extraordinarily contagious. First one and then another 
of his brethren caught the afflatus and followed his ex¬ 
ample. In a few moments every part of the mosque was 
the scene of some novel and horrible rite of self-mutila¬ 
tion, performed by a fresh aspirant to the favour of 
Allah. Some of these feats did not rise above the level 
of the curious but explicable performances which are 
sometimes seen upon English stages; e.g., of the men 
who swallow swords, and carry enormous weights sus¬ 
pended from their jaws; achievements which are in no 
sense a trick or a deception, but are to be attributed to 
abnormal physical powers or structure developed by long 
and often perilous practice. In the Aissaiouian counter- 
89 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


part of these displays there was nothing specially remark¬ 
able, but there were others less commonplace and more 
difficult of explanation. 

At length, several long iron spits or prongs were 
produced and distributed; these formidable implements 
were about two and a half feet in length and sharply 
pointed, and they terminated at the handle in a circular 
wooden knob about the size of a large orange. There 
was great competition for these instruments of torture, 
which were used as follows: Poising one in the air, an 
Aissioui would suddenly force the point into the flesh of 
his own shoulder in front just below the shoulder blade. 
Thus transfixed, and holding the weapon aloft, he strode 
swiftly up and down. Suddenly, at a signal, he fell on 
his knees, still forcing the point into his body, and keep¬ 
ing the wooden head uppermost. Then there started up 
another disciple armed with a big wooden mallet, and 
he, after a few preliminary taps, rising high on tip-toe 
with uplifted weapon would, with an ear-splitting yell, 
bring it down with all his force upon the wooden knob, 
driving the point home through the shoulder of his com¬ 
rade. Blow succeeded blow, the victim wincing beneath 
the stroke, but uttering no sound, and fixing his eyes with 
a look of ineffable delight upon his torturer, till the point 
was driven right through the shoulder and projected at 
the back. Then the patient marched backwards and for¬ 
wards with the air and the gait of a conquering hero. 
At one moment there were four of these semi-naked 
maniacs within a yard of my feet, transfixed and trem¬ 
bling, but beatified and triumphant. And amid the cries 
and the swelter, there never ceased for one second the 
sullen and menacing vociferation of the drums. 

90 


THE DRUMS OF KAXRWAN 

Another man seized an iron skewer, and, placing the 
point within his open jaws, forced it steadily through his 
cheek until it protruded a couple of inches on the outside. 
He barked savagely like a dog, and foamed at the 
lips. 

Others, afflicted with exquisite spasms of hunger, 
knelt down before the chief, whimpering like children 
for food, and turning upon him imploring glances from 
their glazed and bloodshot eyes. His control over his 
following was supreme. Some he gratified, others he 
forbade. At a touch from him, they were silent and 
relaxed into quiescence. One maddened wretch who, 
fancying himself some wild beast, plunged to and fro, 
roaring horribly, and biting and tearing with his teeth at 
whomever he met, was advancing, as I thought, with 
somewhat truculent intent in my direction, when he was 
arrested by his superior and sent back, cringing and 
cowed. 

For those whose ravenous appetites he was content 
to humour the most singular repast was prepared. A 
plate was brought in, covered with huge jagged pieces of 
broken glass, as thick as a shattered soda-water bottle. 
With greedy chuckles and gurglings of delight, one of 
the hungry ones dashed at it, crammed a handful into 
his mouth, and crunched it up as though it were some 
exquisite dainty, a fellow-disciple calmly stroking the 
exterior of his throat, with intent, I suppose, to lubricate 
the descent of the unwonted morsels. A little child held 
up a snake or a sand-worm by the tail, placing the head 
between his teeth, and gulped it gleefully down. Several 
acolytes came in, carrying a big stem of the prickly pear, 
or fico d’lndia, whose leaves are as thick as a one-inch 
9i 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


plank, and are armed with huge projecting thorns. This 
was ambrosia to the starving saints. They rushed at it 
with passionate emulation, tearing at the solid slabs with 
their teeth, and gnawing and munching the coarse fibers, 
regardless of the thorns which pierced their tongues and 
cheeks as they swallowed them down. 

The most singular feature of all, and the one that almost 
defies belief, though it is none the less true, was this— 
that in no case did one drop of blood emerge from scar, 
or gash, or wound. This fact I observed most carefully, 
the mokaddem standing at my side, and each patient in 
turn coming to him when his self-imposed torture had been 
accomplished, and the cataleptic frenzy had spent its force. 
It was the chief who cunningly withdrew the blade from 
cheek or shoulder or body, rubbing over the spot what 
appeared to me to be the saliva of his own mouth; then 
he whispered an absolution in the ear of the disciple, and 
kissed him on the forehead, whereupon the patient, but 
a moment before writhing in maniacal transports, retired 
tranquilly and took his seat upon the floor. He seemed 
none the worse for his recent paroxysm, and the wound 
was marked only by a livid blotch or a hectic flush. 

This was the scene that for more than an hour went on 
without pause or intermission before my eyes. The 
building might have been tenanted by the Harpies or 
Laestrygones of Homer, or by some inhuman monsters of 
legendary myth. Amid the dust and sweat and insuffer¬ 
able heat the naked bodies of the actors shone with a 
ghastly pallor and exhaled a sickening smell. The at¬ 
mosphere reeked with heavy and intoxicating fumes. 
Above the despairing chant of the singers rang the 
frenzied yells of the possessed, the shrieks of the ham- 
92 


THE DRUMS OF KAIRWAN 


merer, and the inarticulate cries, the snarling and growling, 
the bellowing and miauling of the self-imagined beasts. 
And ever behind and through all re-echoed the perpetual 
and pitiless imprecation of the drums. 

As I witnessed the disgusting spectacle and listened to 
the pandemonium of sounds, my head swam, my eyes 
became dim, my senses reeled, and I believed that in a few 
moments I must have fainted, had not one of my friends 
touched me on the shoulder, and, whispering that the 
mokaddem was desirous that I should leave, escorted me 
hurriedly to the door. As I walked back to my quarters, 
and long after through the still night, the beat of the 
tambours continued, and I heard the distant hum of voices, 
broken at intervals by an isolated and piercing cry. Per¬ 
haps yet further and more revolting orgies were celebrated 
after I had left. I had not seen, as other travellers have 
done, the chewing and swallowing of red-hot cinders , 1 
or the harmless handling and walking upon live coals. I 
had been spared that which others have described as the 
climax of the gluttonous debauch, viz., the introduction 
of a live sheep, which then and there is savagely torn to 
pieces and devoured raw by these unnatural banqueters. 
But I had seen enough, and as I sank to sleep my agitated 
fancy pursued a thousand avenues of thought, confound¬ 
ing in one grim medley all the carnivorous horrors of fact 
and fable and fiction. Loud above the din and discord 
the tale of the false prophets of Carmel, awakened by the 
train of association, rang in my ears, till I seemed to 
hear intoned with remorseless repetition the words: “They 

iFor an account of this exploit, vide Lane’s Modern Egyptians, 
cap. xxv.; and compare the description of Richardson, the famous 
fire-eater, in Evelyn’s Memoirs for October 8, 1672. 

93 




TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


cried aloud and cut themselves after their manner with 
knives and lancets, till the blood gushed out upon them” ; 
and in the ever-receding distance of dreamland, faint and 
yet fainter, there throbbed the inexorable and unfaltering 
delirium of the drums. 


A LIFE—A BOWL OF RICE 


By L. DE BRA 


B OW SAM stood in the doorway by his sugar-cane 
stand and watched with narrowed eyes an old man 
who shuffled uncertainly down the alley towards 

him. 

“Hoo la ma!” cried Bow Sam, in surprised Cantonese 
as the old man drew near. “Hello, there! I scarcely knew 
you, venerable Fa’ng!” 

Fa’ng, the hatchetman, straightened his bent shoulders 
and looked up. There was a gleam in his deep bronze 
eyes that was hardly in keeping with his withered frame. 

“Hoo la ma, Bow Sam,” he said, his voice strangely 
deep and vibrant. 

“You have grown very thin,” remarked Bow Sam with 
friendly interest. 

“Hi low; that is true. But why carry around flesh that 
is not food?” 

The sugar-cane vendor eyed the other shrewdly. What 
was the gossip he had heard concerning Fa’ng, the famous 
old hatchetman ? Was it not that the old man was always 
hungry? Yes, that was it! Fa’ng, whose long knife and 
swift arm had been the most feared thing in all China¬ 
town, was starving—too proud to beg, too honest to 
steal. 

“You have eaten well, venerable Fa’ng?” The in¬ 
quiry was in a casual tone, respectful. 

“Aih, I have eaten well,” replied the old hatchetman, 
averting his face. 


95 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


“How unfortunate for me! I have not yet eaten my 
rice; for when one must dine alone, one goes slowly 
to table. Is it not written that a bowl of rice shared is 
doubly enjoyed? Would you not at least have a cup 
of tea while I eat my mean fare?” 

“I shall be honoured to sip tea with you, estimable Bow 
Sam,” replied the hatchetman with poorly disguised eager¬ 
ness. 

“Then condescend to enter my poor house! Ah, one 
does not often have the pleasure of your company in these 
days!” 

Bow Sam preceded his guest to the wretched hovel that 
was the sugar-cane vendor’s only home. There he quickly 
removed all trace of the bowl of rice he had eaten but a 
moment before. 

“Will you take this poor stool, venerable Fa’ng?” said 
Bow, setting out the only stool he possessed, and placing 
it so that the hatchetman’s back would be to the stove. 

Wearily, Fa’ng sat down. Bow put out two small cups, 
each worn and badly chipped, and filled them with hot 
tea. Then, while the hatchetman sipped his tea, Bow un¬ 
covered the rice kettle. There was but one bowl of rice 
left. Bow Sam had intended to keep it for his evening 
meal; for until he sold some sugar-cane, he had no way 
of obtaining more food. 

Behind Fa’ng’s back, Bow took two rice bowls and set 
them on the stove. One bowl he heaped full for the 
hatchetman. In the other he put an upturned tea bowl 
and sprinkled over it his last few grains of rice. 

“Let us give thanks to the gods of the kitchen that 
we have food and teeth and appetite,” chuckled Bow Sam, 
seating himself on a sugar-cane box opposite Fa’ng. 

96 


A LIFE—A BOWL OF RICE 


“Well spoken,” returned the old hatchetman, quickly 
filling his mouth with the nourishing rice. “Aih, there 
is much in life to make one content.” 

With his chop-sticks Bow Sam deftly took up a few 
grains of rice, taking care lest he uncover the upturned 
tea bowl. He was deeply grateful that he had a few 
teeth left, that he quite often had enough rice, and some¬ 
times had meat as often as once a month; but to hear 
the proud old hatchetman express such sentiments on an 
empty stomach filled him with admiration. 

“What a virtue to be content with one’s lot!” he ex¬ 
claimed, refilling the hatchetman’s tea bowl. “Yet the 
younger generation are always fretting because they think 
they have not enough; while, as anyone knows, they have 
much more than we who first came to this land of the 
white foreign devil.” 

“They are young,” spoke Fa’ng, nodding his head 
slowly. “For us the days have fled, the years have not 
tarried. And we have learned that if one has but a bowl 
of rice for food and a bent arm for pillow, one can be 
content.” 

“Haie! How can you speak so softly of the younger 
generation when it is they who have robbed you of your 
livelihood? I know the gossip. You, the most famous 
killer in Chinatown, find yourself cast out like a worn-out 
broom by these young upstarts who have no respect for 
their elders. Is it not true?” 

With his left hand the old hatchetman made an elo¬ 
quent gesture, peculiarly Chinese, much as one quickly 
throws open a fan. 

“Of what value are words, my friend? They cannot 
change that which is changeless. A word cannot temper 
97 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


the wind, nor a phrase procure food for a hungry 
stomach.” 

'‘Nevertheless, I do not like such things,” persisted Sam. 
“I love the old ways. You were an honourable and fear¬ 
less killer. When you were hired to slay one’s enemy you 
went boldly to your victim and told him your business. 
Then, swiftly, even before the doomed one could open his 
lips, you struck—cleaned your blade and walked your 
way. 

“The modern killers!” Bow Sam spewed the words 
out as one does sour rice. “They are too cowardly to 
use the knife. They hide on roofs, fire on their victims, 
then throw away their guns and flee like thieves. Aih, 
what have we come to in these days! 

“It was but yesterday after mid-day rice that I had 
speech with Gar Ling, a gunman of the Sin Wah tong. 
He stopped to buy sugar-cane, and I told him that had I 
the money I would hire him. There is one of the younger 
generation, the pock-marked son of Quong, the dealer 
in jade, who has greatly wronged me and my honourable 
family name, and my distinguished ancestors. As you 
very well know, one cannot soil one’s own hands with the 
blood of vengeance. Moreover, I have no weapon, not 
even a dull cleaver. Neither can I afford to hire a fighting 
man. 

“I was telling all this to Gar Ling,” went on Bow, 
straining the last drop of tea into Fa’ng’s bowl, “and he 
told me he would settle my quarrel, but it would cost one 
thousand dollars. When I told him I had not even a 
thousand copper cash, he became angry and abusive. As 
he walked his way, quickly, like a foreign devil, he spat 
in my direction and called me an unspeakable name.” 

98 


A LIFE—A BOWL OF RICE 


“Ts, ts! You should have wrung his neck. Repeat 
to me his unspeakable words.” 

“He said,” cried Bow Sam, his face twisted in fury, 
“that I am the son of a turtle!” 

“Aih-yah! How insulting! As anyone knows, in all 
our language there is no epithet more vile!” 

“That is true. But what is even worse, I did not re¬ 
member until after he had gone that he had not paid 
me for the piece of sugar-cane. Such is the way of 
the younger generation; and we, who have been long in 
the land, can do nothing.” 

“Yet it is by such things that one learns the lesson of 
enduring tranquillity,” remarked Fa’ng, smacking his 
lips and moving back from the table. 

For about the time, then, that it takes one to make 
nine bows before the household gods, neither man made 
speech. Then Fa’ng arose. 

“An excellent bowl of rice, my good friend.” 

“Aih, it shames me to have to give you such mean 
fare.” 

“And the tea was most fragrant.” 

“Ts, it was only the cheapest Black Dragon.” 

The two old men went to the door. 

“Ho hang la,” said the hatchetman. 

“Ho hang la,” echoed the sugar-cane vendor. “I hope 
you have a safe walk.” 

Fa’ng, the hatchetman, made his way down the alley 
to the rear entrance of a pawnshop. There he spoke a 
few words with the proprietor. 

“I know you are honest, old man,” said the pawn¬ 
broker. “But instead of bringing it back, I hope, for 
your own sake, you will be able to pay what you owe me.” 
99 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 

Then from a safe he t^ok a knife with long, slender 
blade and a handle of ebony in which had been carved an 
unbelievable number of notches. Fa’ng took the knife, 
handling it as one does an object of precious memories, 
concealed it beneath his tattered blouse, and went his way. 

Near the entrance of a gambling house in Canton Alley 
the old hatchetman met the pock-marked son of Quong, 
the dealer in jade. 

“For the wrong you have done Bow Sam, his family 
name, and his distinguished ancestors,” said Fa’ng quietly; 
and before the other could open his lips the long blade 
was through his heart. 

In front of a cigar store in Shanghai Place, Fa’ng 
found Gar Ling, the gunman. “I have business of 
moment with you, Gar Ling,” said the hatchetman. 
“Come.” 

Gar Ling hesitated. He stood in great fear of the 
old killer, yet he dared not show that fear before his 
young friends. So with his left hand he gave a peculiar 
signal. A boy standing near with a basket of lichee nuts 
on his arm turned quickly and followed the two men 
down the alley. Drawing near his employer, the boy held 
up the basket as though soliciting the gunman to buy. 
Gar’s hand darted swiftly into the basket, beneath the 
lichee nuts, and came out with a heavy automatic pistol 
which he quickly concealed beneath his blouse. 

The old hatchetman knew all the tricks of the young 
gunman, but he pretended he had not seen. As they 
turned a dark corner, he paused. 

“For the insulting words you spoke to Bow Sam,” he 
said calmly, and the long blade glided between the gun¬ 
man’s ribs. 


ioo 


? I 

i j 

A LIFE—A BOWL OF RICE 

' f 

As Fa’ng drew the steel away, Gar Ling staggered, 
fired once, then collapsed. 

Bow Sam stood in the doorway by his sugar-cane 
stand and watched with narrowed eyes an old man who 
shuffled uncertainly down the alley toward him. 

“Hoo la ma!” he cried, as the old man drew near. “I 
did not expect to see you again so soon.” 

The old hatchetman did not raise his head nor reply. 
Staggering, he crossed the threshold and fell on his face 
on the littered floor. 

With a throaty cry Bow Sam slammed the door shut. 
He bent over Fa’ng. 

“This knife,” said the hatchetman; “take it—to Wong 
the pawnbroker. Tell him—all. Worth—more—than I 
owe.” 

“But what’s-” 

“For the wrong that the pock-marked one did you, for 
the insult Gar Ling spoke to you, I slew them,” said 
Fa’ng, with sudden strength. “My debt is paid. Tsau 
kom lok” 

“Hale! You did that! Why did you do that? I 
could never pay you! And look! Aih-yah, oh, how 
piteous! You are dying!” 

With awkward fingers, the vendor of sugar-cane tried 
to staunch the flow of blood where Gar Ling’s bullet 
had struck with deadly effect. 

“Pay me?” breathed Fa’ng the hatchetman. “Did you 
—not—feed me? Can one—put a value— on food— 
when the stomach—is empty? Aih, what—matters it? 
A life,” —his eyelids fluttered and closed — “a life—a bowl 
of rice. . . 


IOI 



HODGE 

By ELINOR MORDAUNT 

P EOPLE are accustomed to think of Somerset as a 
country of deep, bosky bays, sunny coves, woods, 
moorlands, but Hemerton was in itself sufficient to 
blur this bland illusion. It lay a mile and a half back 
from the sea, counting it all full tide; at low tide the 
sly, smooth waters, unbroken by a single rock, slipped 
away for another mile or more across a dreary ooze of 
black mud. 

The village lay pasted flat upon the marsh, with no 
trees worthy of the name in sight: a few twisted black¬ 
thorn bushes, a few split willows, one wreck of a giant 
blighted ash in the Rectory gardens, and that was all. 

For months on end the place swam in vapours. There 
were wonderful effects of sunrise and sunset, veils of 
crimson and gold, of every shade of blue and purple. At 
times the grey sea-lavender was like silver, the wet, black 
mud gleaming like dark opals; while at high summer 
there was purple willow-strife spilled thick along the 
ditches, giving the strange place a transitory air of warm¬ 
blooded life; but for the most part it was all as aloof and 
detached as a sleep-walker. 

The birds fitted the place as a verger fits his quiet and 
dusky church: herons and waders of all kinds; wild-crying 
curlew; and here and there a hawk, hanging motionless 
high overhead. 


HODGE 

There were scarcely fifty Rouses in Hemerton, and these 
were all alike, flat and brown and grey; where there had 
been plaster it was flaked and ashen. The very church 
stooped, as though shamed to a sort of poor-relation pose 
by the immense indifference of the mist-veiled sky—the 
drooping lids on a scornful face—for even at midday, in 
mid-summer, the heavens were never quite clear, quite 
blue, but still veiled and apart. 

The Rectory was a two-storied building, low at that, 
and patched with damp: small, with a narrow-chested air, 
tiny windows, a thin, grudging doorway, blistered paint, 
which gave it a leprous air; and just that one tree, with 
its pale, curled leaves in summer, its jangling keys in 
winter. 

It was amazing to find that any creature so warmly 
vital as the Rector’s daughter, Rhoda Fane, had been 
begotten, born, reared in such a place; spent her entire 
life there, apart from two years of school at Clifton, and 
six months in Brussels, cut short by her mother’s death. 

She was like a beech wood in September: ruddy, crisp, 
fragrant. Her hair, dark-brown, with copper lights, was 
so springing with life that it seemed more inclined to grow 
up than hang down; her face was almost round, her wide, 
brown eyes frank and eager. She was as good as any 
man with her leaping-pole: broad-shouldered, deep¬ 
breasted, with a soft, deep contralto voice. 

Her only brother, Hector, was four years younger than 
herself. Funds had run low, drained away by their 
mother’s illness, before it was time for him to go to 
school; he was too delicate for the second-best, roughing 
it among lads of a lower class, and so he was kept at home, 
taught by his father: a thin trickle of distilled classics and 
103 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


wavering mathematics; a good deal of history, no 
geography. 

He, in startling contrast to his sister, was a true child 
of the marshes: thin light hair, vellum-white, peaked face, 
pale grey eyes beneath an overhanging brow, large, 
transparent ears: narrow-chested, long-armed, stooping, 
so that he seemed almost a hunchback. 

In all ways he was the shadow of Rhoda, followed her 
everywhere; and as there is no shadow without the sun, 
so it seemed that he could scarcely have existed apart 
from her. Small as he already was, he almost puled 
himself out of life while she was away at school; and 
after a bare week from home she would get back to find 
him with the best part of his substance peeled from him, 
white as a willow-wand. 

Different as these two were, they were passionately at¬ 
tached to each other. The Rector was a kind father when 
he drew himself out of the morass of melancholy and dis¬ 
illusion into which he had fallen since his wife died, wilt¬ 
ing away with damp and discontent, and sheer loathing 
of the soil in which it had been his misfortune to plant 
her. But still, at the best, he was a parent, and so apart, 
while there were no neighbours, no playfellows. 

Once or twice Rhoda’s school-friends came to stay at 
the Rectory, and for the first day or so it seemed de¬ 
lightful to talk of dress, of a gayer world, possible lovers. 
But after a very little while they began to pall on her: 
they understood nothing of what was her one absorbing 
interest—the natural life of the place in which she lived: 
were discontented, disdainful of the marshland, hated 
the mud, feared the fogs, shivered in the damp. 

Anyhow, the brother and sister were sufficient to each 
104 


HODGE 


other, for they shared a never-failing, or even diminish¬ 
ing, interest—and what more can any two people wish 
for ?—a passionate absorption in, a minute knowledge of, 
the wild life of the marshland; its legends and folk¬ 
lore ; its habits and calls; the mating seasons and manners 
of the birds; the place and habit of every wild flower; 
the way of the wind with the sky, and all its portents; the 
changing seasons, seemingly so uneven from year to year, 
and yet working out so much the same in the end. 

They could not have said how they first came to hear 
of the Forest: they had always talked of it. To Hector, 
at least, it was so vivid that he seemed to have actually 
struggled through its immense depths, swung in its hang¬ 
ing creepers, smelt its sickly-sweet orchids, breathed its 
hot, damp air—so far real to both alike that they would 
find themselves saying, “Do you remember ?” in speaking 
of paths that they had never traversed. 

Provisionally they had fixed their Forest at the Miocene 
Period. Or, rather, this is what it came to: the boy ceas¬ 
ing to protest against the winged monsters, the rhinoc¬ 
eros, the long-jawed mastodon which fascinated the girl’s 
imagination; though there was one impassioned scene 
when he flamed out over his clear remembrance of a sabre- 
toothed tiger, putting all those others—stupid, hulking 
brutes!—out of court by many thousands of years. 

“They couldn’t have been there, couldn’t—not with us 
and with ‘It’—I saw it, I tell you—I tell you I saw it!” 
His pale face flamed, his eyes were as bright as steel. 
“The mastodon! That’s nothing— nothing! But the 
sabre-toothed tiger—I tell you I saw it. What are you 
grinning at now?—in our Forest—ours, mind you!—I 
saw it!” 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


“Oh, indeed, indeed!” Suddenly, because the day was 
so hot, because they were bored, because she was unwit¬ 
tingly impressed, as always, by her brother’s heat of con¬ 
viction, Rhoda’s serene temper was gone. “And did you 
see yourself? and what were you doing there, may I ask 
— you! Silly infant, don’t you know that there weren’t 
any men then? Phew! Everyone knows that—every¬ 
one. You and your old tiger!” 

There was mockery in her laugh as she took him by the 
lapels of his coat; shook him. 

Then, next moment when he turned aside, sullen and 
pale, his brows in a pent-house above his eyes, she was 
filled with contrition. The rotten, thundery day had set 
her all on edge; it was a shame to tease him like this; 
and, after all, how often had she herself remembered 
back? Though there was a difference, and she knew it, 
a sense of fantasy, pretending; while Hector was as 
jealous of every detail of their Forest as a long-banished 
exile over every cherished memory of his own land. 

Though, of course, there were no men contemporary 
with that wretched tiger: he knew that; he must know. 

Lolling under their one tree, in the steamy, early after¬ 
noon, she coaxed him back to the subject, and was beaten 
upon it, as the half-hearted always are. 

He was so amazingly clear about the whole thing. . . . 
Why, it might have happened yesterday! 

He had been up in the trees, slinking along—not the 
hunting man, but the hunted—watchful, furtive; a picker- 
up of what other beasts had slain and taken their fill of: 
more watchful than usual because he had already come 
across a carcass left by the long-toothed terror, all the 
blood sucked out of it. Swinging from bough to bough 
106 


HODGE 


by his hands—which, even when he stood upright, as 
upright as possible, dangled far below his knees—he had 
actually seen it; seen its gleaming tusks, its shining eyes; 
seen it, and fled, wild with terror. 

Was it likely that he could ever forget it? “It and its 
beastly teeth!” he added; then fell silent, brooding; while 
even Rhoda was awed to silence. 

It was that very evening that they found their Forest, 
or, rather, a part of it. They had gone over to the shore 
meaning to bathe, but for once their memories were at 
fault; and they found that the* tide was out, a mere rim 
of molten lead on the far edge of the horizon. 

They were both tired, but they could not rest. They 
cut inland for a bit, then out again; crossing the mud¬ 
flats until the mud oozed above their boots and drove them 
back again. 

They must have wandered about a long time, for the 
light—although it did not actually go—became illusive; 
the air freshened with that salty scent which tells of a 
flowing tide. 

Hector insisted that they ought to wait until it was 
full in, and have their bath by moonlight; but, as Rhoda 
pointed out, that would mean no supper, dawdling about 
for hours. After some time they compromised: they 
would go out and meet the tide; see what it was like. 

Almost at the water’s edge they found It—their Forest. 

There it was, buried like a fly in amber: twisted trunks 
and boughs, matted creepers, all ash-grey and black. 

How far it stretched up and down the shore they could 
not have said, the time was too short, the sea too near for 
any exploration; but not far, they thought, or they must 
have discovered it before. “Nothing more than a fold 
107 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


out of the world, squeezed up to the surface”; that was 
what they agreed upon. 

They divided and ran in opposite directions—“Just to 
try and find out,” as Rhoda said. But after a few yards, 
a couple of dozen, maybe, they called back to each other 
that they had lost it. 

The darkness gathering, the water almost to their 
feet; they were bitterly disappointed, but anyhow there 
was to-morrow, many “to-morrows.” 

All that evening they talked of nothing else. “It’s 
been there for thousands and tens of thousands of years! 
It will be there to-morrow,” they said. 

It was towards two o’clock in the morning that Hector, 
restless with excitement and fear, padded into his sister’s 
room; found her sleeping—stupidly sleeping—with the 
moonlight full upon her, and shook her awake; unreason¬ 
ably angry, as wakeful people always are with the 
sleepers. 

“Suppose we never find it again! Oh, Rhoda, sup¬ 
pose we never find it again!” 

“Find what?” 

“The Forest, you idiot!—our Forest.” 

“Hector, don’t be silly. Go back to bed; you’ll get 
cold. Of course we’ll find it.” 

“Why of course ? I’ve been thinking and thinking and 
thinking. There wasn’t a tree or bush or landmark of 
any sort: we had pottered about all over the shop: sup¬ 
posing we’ve lost it for ever? Oh, supposing, Rhoda, 
Rhoda! What sillies we were! Why didn’t we 'stay 
there, camp opposite it until the tide went out? I feel 
it in my bones—we’ll never find it again—never—never— 
never! There might have been skulls, all sorts of things 
108 


HODGE 


—long teeth—tigers’ teeth! And now we’ve lost it. It’s 
no good talking—we’ve lost it; I know we’ve lost it— 
after all these years! After thousands and thousands and 
thousands of years of remembering!” 

The boy’s forehead was glistening with sweat; the tears 
were running down his face, white as bone in the moon¬ 
light. Rhoda drew him into her bed, comforted him as 
best she could, very sleepy, and unperturbed—for, of 
course, they would find it. How could they help finding 
it? And after a while he fell asleep, still moaning and 
crying, searching for a lost path through his dreams. 

He was right in his foreboding. They did not find it. 
Perhaps the tide had been out further than usual: they 
had walked further than they thought; they had dreamt 
the whole thing; the light had deceived them—impossible 
to say. 

At first, in the broad light of day, even Hector was in¬ 
credulous of their misfortune. Then, as the complete¬ 
ness of their loss grew upon them, they became desper¬ 
ate—possessed by that terrible restlessness of the searcher 
after lost things. Day after day they would come back 
from the sea worn out, utterly hopeless; declaring that 
here was the end of the whole thing; sick at the very 
thought of the secret mud, the long black shore. 

They gave it up. They would never go near “the rotten 
thing” again. 

Then, a few hours later, the thought of the freshly- 
receding tide began to work like madness in their veins, 
and they would be out and away. 

It was easier for Rhoda; for she was of those who 
“sleep o’ nights”; easier until she found that her brother 
slipped off on moonlight nights while she slumbered: 
109 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 

coming back at all hours, haggard and worn to fainting- 
point. 

He stooped more than ever: his brow was more over¬ 
hung, furrowed with horizontal lines. Sometimes, fu¬ 
rious with herself for her sleepiness, Rhoda would awake, 
jump out of bed and run to the window in the fresh dawn, 
to see the boy dragging himself home, old as the ages, his 
hands hanging loose to his knees. 

At last the breaking-point came. He was very ill: 
after a long convalescence, money was collected from 
numerous relations, family treasures were sold, and he 
was sent away to school. 

He came back for his holidays a changed creature, 
talking of footer, then of cricket; of boys and masters; 
of school—school—school—nothing but school; blunt 
and practical. 

But all this was at the front of him, deliberately dis¬ 
played in the shop-windows. 

At the back of him, buried out of sight, there was still 
the visionary rememberer. Rhoda, who loved him, 
realised this. 

At first she did not dare to speak of the Forest. Then, 
trying to get at something of the old Hector, she pressed 
the point; pressed it and pressed it. It was she now who 
kept on with that eternal, “Don’t you remember?” 

The worst of the whole thing was that he did not even 
pretend to forget. He did worse—he laughed. And in 
her own pain she now realised how often and how deeply 
she must have hurt him. 

“Oh, that rot! What silly idiots we were! Such 
rot!” 

And yet, at the back of him, at the back of his too- 


no 


HODGE 


direct gaze, his laughter, there was something. Oh, 
yes, there was something. She was certain of that. 

Deep, deep, hidden away at the back of him, at the 
back of that most imperturbable of all reserves, a boy’s 
reserve, he remembered, felt as he had always felt. He 
shut her out of it, that was all: her—Rhoda. 

At the end of a year they ceased to talk of the Forest; 
all those far-back things dropped away from their inter¬ 
course. To outward seeming their love for the country¬ 
side, their strange, unyouthful interest in geology, the 
age-buried world, seemed a thing of the past. 

Hector had a bicycle now: he was often away for hours 
at a time. He never even spoke of where he had been, 
what he had been doing. It was always: “Nowhere in 
particular; nothing in particular.” 

Then, two years later, upon just such a breathless mid¬ 
summer day, he burst in upon his sister, his face crimson 
with excitement. 

“I’ve found it! I never gave up—never for a moment! 
I pretended—I thought you thought it rot—were draw¬ 
ing me on—but it’s there. We were right. It’s there— 
there! Quick! quick! Now the tide’s just almost full 
out. . . . Oh, by Jingo! to think I’ve found it! Rhoda, 
hurry up—quick!” He was dancing with impatience. 

“I can ride the bike—you on the step,” breathed 
Rhoda, and snatched up a hat. 

They flew. The village shot past them: the flat 
country swirled like a top. At last they came to a place 
where there was a tiny rag of torn handkerchief tied to a 
stick stuck upright in the ground. Here they left the road, 
laid the bicycle in a dry ditch, and cut away across the 
marsh; guided by more signals—scraps of cambric, then 
hi 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


paper; towards the end, one every ten yards or less, until 
Rhoda wondered how in the world had the boy curbed 
himself to such care! 

Then—there it was. 

They stepped it: just on fifty yards long, indefinitely 
wide, running out into little bays, here and there tailing 
off so that it was impossible to discover any definite edge, 
sinking away out of sight like a dream. 

The sun was blazing hot and the top of the mud dry. 
In places they went down upon their hands and knees, 
peering; but really one saw most standing a little way 
off, with one’s head bent, eyeing it sideways. 

It was in this way that Rhoda found It—Him! 

“Look—look! Oh, I say—there’s something ... A 
thing—an animal! No—no—a—a-” 

“Sabre-toothed tiger!’’ The boy’s wild shriek of 
triumph showed how he had hugged that old conjec¬ 
ture. 

He came running, but until he got his head at exactly 
the same slant as hers he could see nothing, and was 
furiously petulant. 

“Idiot! Silly fool!—nothing but a bough. You-’’ 

A lucky angle, and, “Oh, I say, by Jove! I’ve got it now! 
A man—a man!” 

“A monkey—a great ape; there were no men, then, 
with ‘It.’ ” There, it seemed, she conceded him his tiger. 
“A little nearer—now again, there!’’ 

They crept towards it. It was clear enough at a little 
distance; but nearer, what with the glazing sun and the 
queer incandescent lights on the mud, they found diffi¬ 
culty in exactly placing it. At last they had it, found 
themselves immediately over it; were able, kneeling side 
112 



HODGE 


by side, to gaze down at the strange, age-old figure, lying 
huddled together, face forward. 

It was not more than a couple of feet down; the semi¬ 
transparent mud must have been silting over it for years 
and years: silted away again through centuries. And all 
for them—just for them. What a thought! 

Hector raced off for his bicycle, and so on to the near¬ 
est cottage to borrow a spade. 

The mental picture of the “man” and the sabre-toothed 
tiger met and clashed in his brain. If he was so certain 
of the man he must concede the tiger, given in to Rhoda 
and her later period. Unless—unless. . . . Suddenly he 
clapped his hands to his ears as though someone were 
shouting: his eyes closed, shutting out sight and sound. 
There was a tiger, he remembered—of course he re¬ 
membered! And if he were there, others were there also 
—not one tiger, not one man, but tigers and men; both, 
both! 

By the time he got back to where he had left his sister, 
the water was above her knees, the tide racing inwards. 

They were not going to be done this time, however. 

It was five o’clock in the afternoon, and their father 
was away from home. Rhoda went back and ordered the 
household with as much sobriety as possible; collected 
a supply of food and a couple of blankets—they had 
camped out before and there was nothing so very amaz¬ 
ing in their behaviour—then returned to the shore, the 
shrine. 

Hector was sitting at the edge of the water, staring 
fixedly, white as a sheet. 

Rhoda collected driftwood and built a fire; almost fed 
him, for he took nothing but what was put into his hand. 
ii3 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


“It will still be there, even if we go to sleep,” she said; 
then, “Anyhow, we’ll watch turn and turn about.” 

But it was all of no use. The boy might lie down in 
his turn, but he still faced the sea with steady, staring 
eyes. 

Soon after three he woke his sister, shaking her in a 
frenzy of impatience. Oh, these sleepers! 

“Sleeping! Sleeping! You great stupid, you! I 
never! I . . . Just look at the tide—only look!” 

The tide was pretty far out, the whole world a mist of 
pinkish-grey. Step by step they followed the retreating 
lap of water. 

By six o’clock they had the heavy body out, and were 
dragging it across the rapidly-drying mud. 

It was not as big as Hector: five-foot-one at the most, 
but almost incredibly heavy, with immense rounded 
shoulders. 

By the time they reached the true shore they were done, 
and flung themselves down, panting, exhausted. But 
they could not rest. A few minutes more and they were 
up again, turning the creature over, rubbing the mud away 
from the hairy body with bunches of grass; parting the 
long, matted locks which hung over its lowering face, 
with the overhung brow, flat nose, almost non-existent 
chin. The eyes were shut, but oddly unsunken: it smelt 
of marsh slime, of decayed vegetation, but nothing 
more. 

Hector poked forward a finger to see if he could push 
up one eyelid, and drew back sharply. 

“Why—hang it all—the thing’s warm!” 

“No wonder, with this sun. I’m dripping from head 
114 


HODGE 


to foot. Hector, we must go home. Matty will tell; 
there’ll be the eyes of a row.” 

For all her insistence it was another hour before Rhoda 
could get her brother away. Again and again he met the 
returning tide with her hat, bringing it back full of water ; 
washing their find from head to foot, combing its matted 
hair with a clipped fragment of driftwood. But at last 
they dragged it to a dry dyke, covered it with dry yellow 
grass, and were off, Rhoda on the step this time, Hector 
draped limply over the handle of the bicycle. 

He slept like a dead thing for the best part of that day. 
But soon after three they were away again: no use for 
Rhoda to raise objections; the unrest of an intense excite¬ 
ment was in her bones as in his, and he knew it. 

It had been a cloudless day, the veil of mist fainter 
than usual, the sky bluer. 

As they left the bicycle and cut across the rough fore¬ 
shore the sun beat down upon them with an almost un¬ 
bearable fierceness. There was a shimmer like a mirage 
across the marshes: the sea was the colour of burnt 
steel. 

They dog-trotted half the way, arguing as they ran; 
Hector, still fixed, pivoting upon his sabre-toothed tiger, 
and yet insistent that this was a man—a real man—con¬ 
temporary with it: the first absolute proof of human ex¬ 
istence anterior to the First Glacial age. 

“An ape—a sort of ape—nearish to a man, but—well, 
look at his hair.” She’d give him his tiger, but not his 
man. 

“By Gad, you’d grow hair, running wild as he did— 
a man-” 

“Hector, what rot! Why, anyone—anyone could 
115 



TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


see—” She thought of her father, the smooth curate, 
the rubicund farmers. ... A man! 

“Well, stick to it—stick to it! But I bet you any¬ 
thing—anything . . .” 

Hector’s words were jerked out of him as he padded on : 

“We’ll get hundreds and hundreds of pounds for him! 
Travel—see the world—go to Java, where that other 
chap—what’s his name—was found. Why, he’s older 
than the Heidelberg Johnny—a thousand thousand times 
great-grandfather to that Pitcairn thing—older—older— 
oh, older than any!” 

Panting, stumbling, half-blind with exhaustion, the 
boy was still a good six yards in front of his sister as he 
reached the dry dyke where they had left their treasure. 

Rhoda saw him stand for a moment, staring, then spin 
round as though he had been shot, throwing up his arms 
with a hoarse scream. 

By the time she had her own arms about him, he could 
only point, trembling from head to foot. 

There was nothing there! Torn grass where they had 
pulled it to rub down their find; the very shape of the 
body distinct upon the sandy, sparsely-covered soil; the 
stick with the pennant of blue ribbon which Rhoda had 
taken from her hat to mark the spot. . . . Nothing more, 
nothing whatever. 

Up and down the girl ran, circling like a plover, her 
head bent. It must be somewhere, it must—it must! 

She glanced at her brother, who stood as though turned 
to stone: this was the sort of thing which sent people 
mad, killed them—to be so frightfully disappointed, and 
yet to stand still, to say nothing. 

116 


HODGE 

She caught at his arm and faced him, the tears stream¬ 
ing down her cheeks. 

“Oh, my dear, my dear—” she began, then broke 
off, staring beyond him. 

“Why . . . why—Hector—I say—” Her voice 
broke to a whisper: she had a feeling as though she must 
be taking part in some mad dream. Quite inconsequently 
the thought of Balaam came to her. How did Balaam 
feel when the ass spoke to him? As she did—with eye 
more amazed than any ears could ever be. 

“Hector—look. . . . It—It . . 

As her brother still stood speechless, with bent head 
and ashen face, she dropped to silence: too terrified of It, 
of her plainly deluded self, of everything on earth, to say 
more. . . . 

One simply could not trust one’s own eyes; that’s what 
it came to. 

Her legs were trembling; she could feel her knees 
touching each other, cold and clammy. 

It would have been impossible to say a word, even if 
she had dared to reveal her own insanity; she could only 
pluck the lapels of her brother’s coat, running her dry 
tongue along her lips. 

Something in her unusual silence must have stirred 
through the boy’s own misery, for after a moment or so 
he looked up, at first dimly, as though scarcely recognis¬ 
ing her. Then—slowly realising her intent glance fixed 
on something beyond his own shoulder, he turned—and 
saw. 

Twenty yards or more off, on a mound of coarse grass 
and sand just above the high-tide mark, “It” was sitting, 
its long arms wound round its knees, staring out to sea. 
ii 7 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 

For a moment or so they hung, open-mouthed, wide- 
eyed. 

For the life of her, Rlioda could not have moved a step 
nearer. The creature’s heavy shoulders were rounded, 
its head thrust forward. Silhouetted against sea and sky, 
white in contrast to its darkness, it had the aloofness of 
incredible age; drawn apart, almost sanctified by its im¬ 
measurable remoteness, its detachment from all that 
meant life to the men and women of the twentieth cen¬ 
tury: the web of fancied necessities, trivial possessions, 
absorptions. 

“There was no sea—of course, there was no sea any¬ 
where near here then!” The boy’s whisper opened an in¬ 
calculable panorama of world-wide change. 

There had been no sea here then; no Bristol Channel, 
no Irish Sea. Valley and river, that was all! 

This alien being who had lived, and more than half- 
died, in this very spot, was gazing at something alto¬ 
gether strange: a vast, uneasy sheet of water with but 
one visible bank; no golden-brown lights, no shadows, 
no reflections: a strange, restless and indifferent god. 

“Well—anyhow. . . . Oh, blazes! here goes! if—” 
Young Fane broke off with a decision that cut his doubts, 
and moved forward. 

In a moment the creature was alert, its head flung side¬ 
ways and up, sniffing the air like a dog. 

It half turned, as though to run; then, as the boy 
stopped short, it paused. 

“Rhoda—get the grub—go quietly—don’t run. . . . 
Bread-and-butter—anything!” 

They had flung down the frail with the bottle of milk, 
cake, bread-and-butter that they had brought with them— 
118 


HODGE 


enough for tea and supper—heedless in their despair. 
Rhoda moved a step or two away, picked up a packet, un¬ 
folded it and thrust the food into her brother’s hand— 
cake, a propitiation! 

The strange figure, upright—and yet not upright as 
it is counted in these days—remained stationary; there 
was one quick turn of the head following her, then the 
poise of it showed eyes immovably fixed upon the male. 

Hector moved forward very slowly, one smooth step 
after another. Rhoda had seen him like that with wild 
birds and rabbits. He wore an old suit of shrunken 
flannels, faded to a yellowish-grey, which blurred him 
into the landscape. Far enough off to catch his outline 
against the molten glare of the sea, she noted that his 
shoulders were almost as bent as those of that 
Other. . . . Other what?—man?—ape? The specula¬ 
tion zigzagged to and fro like lightning through her 
mind. She could scarcely breathe for anxiety. 

As the boy drew quite near to the dull, brownish figure 
it jerked its head uneasily aside—she knew what Hec¬ 
tor’s eyes were like, a steady, luminous grey under the 
bent brows—made a swinging movement with its arms, 
half turned; then stopped, stared sideways, crouching, 
sniffing. 

The boy’s arm was held out at its fullest stretch in 
front of him. Heaven—the old, old gods—only knew 
upon what beast-torn carrion the creature had once fed; 
but it was famished, and some instinct must have told it 
that here was food, for it snatched and crammed its 
mouth. 

Hector turned and Rhoda’s heart was in her throat, for 
there was no knowing what it might not do at that. But 
119 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


as he moved steadily away, without so much as a glance 
behind him, it hesitated, threw up its hand, as though to 
strike or throw; then followed. 

That was the beginning of it. During those first days 
it would have followed him to the end of the world. 
Later on, he told himself bitterly that he had been a fool 
not to have seen further; gone off anywhere—oh, any¬ 
where, so long as it was far enough—dragging the brute 
after him while his leadership still held. 

It was with difficulty that they prevented it from 
dogging them back to the Rectory—just imagine it tail¬ 
ing through the village at their heels! But once it under¬ 
stood that it must stay where it was, it sat down on a 
grassy hummock, crouching with its arms round its 
knees, one hand tightly clenched, its small, light eyes, 
overhung by that portentous brow, following them with 
a look of desolate loneliness. 

Again and again the boy and girl glanced back, but it 
still sat there staring after them, immovable in the spot 
which Hector had indicated to it. They had left it all the 
food they had with them, and one of the blankets which 
they had been too hot to carry home that morning. As it 
plainly had not known what to do with the thing, Rhoda, 
overcome by a sort of motherliness, had thrown it over 
its shoulders. Thus it sat, shrouded like an Arab, its 
shaggy head cut like a giant burr against the pale prim¬ 
rose sky. 

“A beastly shame leaving it alone like that!” They 
both felt it; scarcely liked to meet each other’s eyes over 
it. And yet, pity it as they might, engrossed in it as they 
were, they couldn’t stay there with it after dark. No 
120 


HODGE 


reason, no fear—just couldn’t! Why? Oh, well, for 
all its new-found life, it was as far away as any ghost. 

“Poor brute!” said Rhoda. 

“Poor chap!” Hector’s under-lip was thrust out, his 
look aggressive. But there was no argument; and when 
he treated her— “Don’t be silly; of course it’s not a man; 
any duffer could see that”—with contemptuous silence, 
Rhoda knew that he was absolutely fixed in his convic¬ 
tions. 

He proved it, too, next morning, leading the creature 
out into the half-dried mud and back again to where his 
sister sat, following his apparently aimless movements 
with puzzled eyes. 

“Now, look,” he crowed. “Just you look, Miss Bloom¬ 
ing-Cocksure !” 

He was right. There was the mark of his own heavy 
nailed boot, and beside it the track of other feet; oddly- 
shaped enough, but with the weight distinctly thrown 
upon the heel and great-toe, as no beast save man has ever 
yet thrown it—that fine developed great-toe, the emblem 
of leadership. Hardly a trace of such pressure as the 
three greater apes show, all on the outer edge of the foot; 
not even flat and even as the baboon throws his. 

It was after this that—without another word said— 
Rhoda, meek for once, followed her brother’s example, 
and began to speak of the creature as “He.” 

They even gave him a name. They called him Hodge; 
only in fun, and yet with a feeling that here was one of 
the first of all countrymen: less learned, and yet in some 
way so much more observant, self-sufficing, than his 
machine-made successors. 

He could run at an almost incredible rate, bent as he 


121 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 

was; climb any tree; out-throw either of them, doubling 
the distance. It was there that they got at the meaning 
of that closed fist; for at least three days he had never let 
go of his stone—his one weapon. 

“He didn’t trust us.” Rhoda was hurt, her vanity 
touched; and when they had seemed to be making such 
progress, too! 

“Not that—a sort of ingrained habit; the poor devil 
didn’t feel dressed without it,” protested Hector. “Of 
course he trusts us as much as a perfectly natural crea¬ 
ture ever trusts anything or anybody.” 

The Rector had gone on a visit to their only relative, 
an old aunt, who was dying in as leisurely a fashion as 
she had lived, and was unable to leave her. A neighbour¬ 
ing curate took that next Sunday’s service. 

It had been a Monday when Hector found Hodge, and 
a very great deal can happen in that time. 

From the first it had seemed clear that nothing in the 
way of communicating with authorities, experts, could be 
done until their father was there to back them, adding his 
own testimony. It was no good just writing—Hector 
did, indeed, begin a letter to Sir Ray Lankester, but tore 
it up, appalled by his own formless, boyish handwriting. 
“He’d think we were just getting at him—a couple of 
silly kids,” was his reflection. 

He knew a lot for his age; was very certain of his own 
knowledge; felt no personal fear of this wild man of his. 
But ordinary grown-up people! That was altogether a 
different matter. And here he touched the primitive mis¬ 
trust of all real youth for anything too completely finished 
and sophisticated. 


122 


HODGE 


Of course, from the very beginning, there were all sorts . 
of minor troubles with Matty over their continued thefts 
of food; difficulties in keeping the creature away from 
the house and village. 

But all that was nothing to what followed. 

The first dim, unformulated sense of fear began on the 
night when Hector, awakened by a loud rustling among 
the leaves of that one tree, discovered Hodge there, climb¬ 
ing along a bough which ended close against Rhoda’s 
window. 

Rhoda’s, not his—that was the queer part of itJ 

The boy felt half huffed as he drove him off. But 
when he came again, some instinct, something far less 
plain than thought, began to worry him: something which 
seemed ludicrous, until it gathered and grew to a feeling 
of nausea so horrible that the cold sweat pricked out upon 
his breast and forehead. 

At the third visit the fear was more defined. But 
still. . . . That brute “smitten” with Rhoda! He tried 
to laugh it off. Anyhow, what did it matter? And 
yet. . . . Hang it all! there was something sickening 
about it all. It was impossible to sleep at night, listening, 
always listening. 

He was only thirteen. Of course he had heard other 
chaps talking, but he had no real idea of the fierce drive 
of physical desire. And yet it was plain enough that 
here was something “beastly” beyond all words. 

He told Rhoda to keep her window bolted, and when 
she protested against such “fugging,” touched on his own 
fears, tried, awkwardly enough, to explain without ex¬ 
plaining. 


123 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


“I’m funky about Hodge—he’s taken to following us. 
He might get in—bag something.” 

‘The darling!” cried Rhoda. ‘‘Look here, old chap. 
I really believe he’s fond of me; fonder of me than of 
you!” 

She persisted in putting it to the test next day; left 
“Hodge” sitting by her brother, and walked away. 

The creature moved his head uneasily from side to side, 
glanced at Hector, and his glance was full of hatred, 
malevolence; then, scrambling furtively to his feet, help¬ 
ing himself with his hands, one fist tight-closed, in the 
old fashion, he passed round the back of the boy, and 
followed her. 

For a minute or two Hector sat hunched together, star¬ 
ing doggedly out to sea. If Rhoda chose to make an ass 
of herself—well, let her. After all, what could the brute 
do? She was bigger than he was, had nothing on her 
worth stealing; nothing of any use to Hodge, anyhow, 
he told himself. 

Then, of a sudden, that half-formulated dread, that 
sick panic seized him afresh. He glanced round; both 
Hodge and his sister were out of sight, and he started to 
run with all his might, shouting. 

There was an answering cry from Rhoda, shriller than 
usual, with a note of panic in it. This gave him the di¬ 
rection ; and, plunging off among a group of shallow sand- 
dunes, he found himself almost upon them. 

Rhoda was drawn up very straight, laughing nervously, 
her shoulders back, flushed to the eyes, while Hodge 
stood close in front of her, gabbling—they had tried him 
with their own words, but the oddly-angled jaw had 
124 


HODGE 


seemed to cramp the tongue beyond hope of articulate 
speech—gabbling, gesticulating. 

“Oh, Hector!” The girl’s cry was full of relief as 
she swung sideways toward him; while Hodge, glancing 
round, saw him, raised his hand, and threw. 

The stone just grazed the boy’s cheek, drawing a spurt 
of blood; but this was enough for Rhoda, who forgot 
her own panic in a flame of indignation. 

The creature could not have understood a word of 
what she said: her denunciation, abuse, “the wigging” 
she gave him. But her look was enough, and he shrank 
aside, shamed as a beaten dog. 

They did not bid him good-night. They had taught 
him to shake hands; but now that he was in disgrace all 
that was over, and they turned aside with the set severity 
of youth: bent brows and straightened, hard mouths. 

Rhoda was the first to relent, half-way home, breaking 
their silence with a laugh: “Poor old Hodge! I don’t 
know why I was so scared—I must have got him rattled, 
or he’d never have thrown that stone. Why, it was al¬ 
ways you he liked best, followed,” she added magnani¬ 
mously. 

And yet she was puzzled, all on edge, as she had never 
been before. The look Hodge had cast at her brother 
was unmistakable; but why?—why? What had changed 
him? She never even thought of that passion common 
to man and beast, interwoven with all desire, hatred—the 
lees of love—jealousy. 

All that evening Hector scarcely spoke. He was not 
so much scared as gravely anxious in a man’s way. If 
that brute got him with a stone, what would happen to 
Rhoda? Even supposing that there had been anyone to 

125 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


consult, he could not, for the life of him, have put his 
fear into words. So much a man, he was yet too much 
a boy for that. Terrified of ridicule, incredulity, he 
hugged his secret, as that strange man-beast hugged his— 
the highest and lowest—the most primitive and the most 
cultured—forever uncommunicative; those in the mid¬ 
way the babblers. 

He was so firm in his insistence upon Rhoda changing 
her room that night that she gave way, without argument, 
overawed by his gravity, by an odd, chill sense of fear 
which hung about her. “I must have got a cold. I’ve 
a sort of feeling of a goose walking over my grave,” was 
what she said laughingly, half-shamefaced, accustomed as 
she was to attribute every feeling to some natural 
cause. 

That night, soon after midnight, the brute was back in 
the tree. Hector heard the rustling, then the spring and 
swish of a released bough. Before he lay down he had 
unbolted one of the long bars from the underneath part of 
his old-fashioned iron bedstead; and, now taking it in 
his hand, he ran to Rhoda’s room. 

The white-washed walls and ceiling were so flooded 
with moonlight that it was almost as light as day. 

Hodge was already in the room: the clothes were torn 
from the bed; the cupboard doors wide open; the whole 
place littered with feminine attire. 

He—It—the impersonal pronoun slid into its place in 
the boy’s mind, and no words of self-reproach or con¬ 
demnation could have said more—stood at the foot of the 
empty bed, with something white—it might have been a 
chemise—in its hand, held up to its face. Hector could 
not catch its expression, but there was something inex- 
126 


HODGE 


pressibly bestial in the silhouette of its head, bent, sniffing; 
he could actually hear the whistling breath. 

He would have given anything if only it had stayed, 
fought it out then. But it belonged to a state too far 
away for that—defensive, at times aggressive, but for¬ 
ever running, hiding, slinking: a thrower from among 
thick boughs behind tree-trunks—and in a moment it 
was out of the window, bundling over the sill, so clumsy 
and yet so amazingly quick. 

He could hear the swing of a bough as it caught it. 
There was a loud rustle of leaves, and a stone hurtled in 
through the window; but that was all. 

Hector tidied the room, tossed the scattered garments 
into the bottom of the wardrobe, and re-made the bed in 
his awkward boy-fashion, moving mechanically, as if in 
a dream; his hands busied over his petty tasks, his mind 
engrossed with something so tremendous that he seemed 
to be two separate people, of which the one, the greater, 
revolved slowly and certainly in an unalterable orbit, quite 
apart from his old everyday life, from that Hector Fane 
whom he had always known, thought of, spoken of as 
“myself.” 

He went to his own room, put on his collar and coat— 
for he had lain down upon his bed without undressing, 
every nerve on edge—laced up his boots with meticulous 
care. He was no longer frightened or hurried; he knew 
exactly what he was going to do, and that alone hung 
him—moving slowly, surely—as upon a pivot. 

The moonlight was so clear that there was no need for 
a candle, flooding the stairway, the study with its shabby 
book-shelves. 

Easy enough to take the old shot-gun from the nails 
127 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


over the mantelshelf; only last holiday—years and years 
ago, while he was still a child—he had been allowed to 
use it for wild-duck shooting—and run his hand along 
the back of the writing-table drawer in search of those 
three or four cartridges which he had seen there a couple 
of days earlier. 

The cartridges in his pocket swung against his hip as 
he mounted his bicycle and rode away—guiding himself 
with one hand, the gun lying heavily along his left arm; 
it was like someone nudging, reminding. 

The scene was entirely familiar; but what was so 
strange in himself lent it an air of something new and 
uncanny. The winding road had a swing, drawing him 
with it; the mingled mist and moonlight were sentient, 
watchful, holding their breath. 

Once or twice he seemed to catch sight of a low, stoop¬ 
ing figure amid the rough grass and rush-tufted hollows 
to the left of him; but he could not be sure until he 
reached the very shore, left his bicycle in the old place. 

Then a stone grazed his shoulder, and there was a 
blurred scurry of brown, from hummock to hummock, 
low as a hare to the ground. 

Once in the open he got a clear sight of Hodge. The 
far-away tide was on the flow, but there was still a good 
half-mile of mud, like lead in the silvery dawn. 

The man-beast bundled down the sandy strip of shore 
and out on to the mud: ungainly, stumbling; the boy be¬ 
hind it—“It.” Hector held to that: the pronoun was 
altogether reassuring now—something to hold to, hard 
as a bone in his brain. 

On the edge of the tide it tried to turn, double; then 
paused, fascinated, amazed: numb with fear of the 
128 


HODGE 


strange level pipe pointing, oddly threatening, the first 
ray of sunlight running like an arrow of gold along the 
top of it. 

There was something utterly naive and piteous in the 
misplaced creature’s gesture: the way in which it stood— 
long arms, short, bandy legs—moving its head uneasily 
from side to side; bewildered, yet fascinated. 

‘‘Poor beggar!” muttered Hector. He could not have 
said why, but he was horribly sorry, ashamed, saddened. 

Years later he thought more clearly—“Poor beggar! 
After all, what did he want but life—more life—the 
complete life of any man—or animal, either, come to 
that!” 

As he pressed his finger to the trigger he saw the rough 
brown figure throw up its arms, leap high in the air, and 
drop. 

Something like a red-hot iron burnt up the back of his 
own neck; his head throbbed. After all, what did death 
matter when life was so rotten, so inexplicable? It 
wasn’t that, only—only. . . . Well, it was beastly to 
feel so tired, so altogether gone to pieces. 

With bent head he made his way, ploughing through 
the mud and sand, back to the shore; sat down rather 
suddenly, with a feeling as though the ground had risen 
up to meet him, and winding his arms round his knees, 
stared out to sea; washed through and through, swept by 
an immense sense of grief, a desperate regret which had 
nothing whatever to do with his immediate action—the 
death of Hodge. 

That was something which had to be gone through 
with; it wasn’t that—not exactly that. . . . But, oh, the 
futility, the waste of . . . well, of everything! 

129 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


“Rotten luck!” He shuddered as he dragged himself 
wearily to his feet. He could not have gone before, not 
while there was the mud with “that” on it; not even so 
long as the shining sands were bare. It would have 
seemed too hurried, almost indecent. But now that an un¬ 
broken, glittering sheet of water lapped the very edge of 
the shore, the funeral ceremony—with all its pomp of sun¬ 
rise—was over; and, turning aside, he stumbled wearily 
through the rough grass to the place where he had left 
his bicycle. 


HATTERAS 

By A. W. MASON 

T HE story was told to me by James Walker in the 
cabin of a seven-ton cutter, one night when we 
lay anchored in Helford River. It was towards 
the end of September; during this last week the air had 
grown chilly with the dusk, and the sea when it lost the 
sun took on a leaden and a dreary look. There was no 
other boat on the wooded creek and the swish of the tide 
against the planks had a very lonesome sound. All these 
circumstances I think provoked Walker to tell the story, 
but most of all the lonely swish of the tide against the 
planks. For it is the story of a man’s loneliness and the 
strange ways into which loneliness misled his soul. How¬ 
ever, let the story speak for itself. 

Hatteras and Walker had been schoolfellows, though 
never classmates. Hatteras indeed was the head of the 
school and prophecy vaguely sketched out for him a bril¬ 
liant career in some service of importance. The definite 
law, however, that the sins of the fathers shall be visited 
upon the children overbore this prophecy. Hatteras, the 
father, disorganized his son’s future by dropping unex¬ 
pectedly through one of the trapways of speculation into 
the Bankruptcy Court beneath, just two months before 
Hatteras, the son, was to have gone up to Oxford. The 
lad was therefore compelled to start life in a stony world 
with a stock-in-trade which consisted of a schoolboy’s 
I3i 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


command of the classics, a real inborn gift of tongues and 
the friendship of James Walker. 

The last item proved of the most immediate value. 
For Walker, whose father was the junior partner in a 
firm of West African merchants, obtained for Hatteras 
an employment as the bookkeeper at a branch factory in 
the Bight of Benin. 

Thus the friends parted. Hatteras went out to West 
Africa alone, and met with a strange welcome on the day 
when he landed. The incident did not come to Walker’s 
ears until some time afterwards, nor when he heard of 
it did he at once appreciate the effect which it had 
upon Hatteras. But chronologically it comes into the 
story at this point, and so may as well be immediately 
told. 

There was no settlement very near to the factory. It 
stood by itself on the swamps of the Forcados River with 
the mangrove forest closing in about it. Accordingly the 
captain of the steamer just put Hatteras ashore in a boat 
and left him with his traps on the beach. Half-a-dozen 
Kru boys had come down from the factory to receive him, 
but they could speak no English, and Hatteras at this time 
could speak no Kru. So that although there was no lack 
of conversation there was not much interchange of 
thought. At last Hatteras pointed to his traps. The Kru 
boys picked them up and preceded Hatteras to the factory. 
They mounted the steps to the verandah on the first floor 
and laid their loads down. Then they proceeded to further 
conversation. Hatteras gathered from their excited faces 
and gestures that they wished to impart information, but 
he could make neither head nor tail of a word they said, 
and at last he retired from the din of their chatter through 
132 


HATTERAS 


the windows of a room which gave on to the verandah, 
and sat down to wait for his superior, the agent. 

It was early in the morning when Hatteras landed and 
he waited until midday patiently. In the afternoon it 
occurred to him that the agent would have shown a kindly 
consideration if he had left a written message or an in¬ 
telligible Kru boy to receive him. It is true that the 
blacks came in at intervals and chattered and gesticulated, 
but matters were not thereby appreciably improved. He 
did not like to go poking about the house, so he con¬ 
templated the mud banks and the mud river and the man¬ 
grove forest, and cursed the agent. The country was 
very quiet. There are few things quieter than a West 
African forest in the daytime. It is obtrusively, em¬ 
phatically quiet. It does not let you forget how singularly 
quiet it is. And towards sundown the quietude began to 
jar on Hatteras’ nerves. He was besides very hungry. 
To while away the time he took a stroll round the ver¬ 
andah. 

He walked along the side of the houses towards the 
back, and as he neared the back he heard a humming 
sound. The further he went the louder it grew. It was 
something like the hum of a mill, only not so metallic and 
not so loud; and it came from the rear of the house. 

Hatteras turned the corner and what he saw was this— 
a shuttered window and a cloud of flies. The flies were 
not aimlessly swarming outside the window; they 
streamed in through the lattice of the shutters in a busy, 
practical way; they came in columns from the forest and 
converged upon the shutters; and the hum sounded from 
within the room. 

Hatteras looked about for a Kru boy for the sake of 
133 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 

company, but at that moment there was not one to be 
seen. 

He felt the cold strike at his spine. He went back into 
the room in which he had been sitting. He sat again but 
he sat shivering. The agent had left no word for 
him. . . . The Kru boys had been anxious to explain— 
something. The humming of the flies about that shut¬ 
tered window seemed to Hatteras a more explicit language 
than the Kru boys’ chatterings. He penetrated into the 
interior of the house, and reckoned up the doors. He 
opened one of them ever so slightly and the buzzing came 
through like the hum of a wheel in a factory revolving in 
the collar of a strap. He flung the door open and stood 
upon the threshold. The atmosphere of the room ap¬ 
palled him; he felt the sweat break cold upon his fore¬ 
head and a deadly sickness in all his body. Then he 
nerved himself to enter. 

At first he saw little because of the gloom. In a while, 
however, he made out a bed stretched along the wall and 
a thing stretched upon the bed. The thing was more or 
less shapeless because it was covered with a black furry 
sort of rug. Hatteras, however, had little trouble in de¬ 
fining it. He knew now for certain what it was that the 
Kru boys had been so anxious to explain to him. He 
approached the bed and bent over it, and as he bent over 
it the horrible thing occurred which left so vivid an im¬ 
pression on Hatteras. The black furry rug suddenly lifted 
itself from the bed, beat about Hatteras’ face, and dis¬ 
solved into flies. The Kru boys found Hatteras in a 
dead swoon on the floor half-an-hour later, and next day, 
of course, he was down with the fever. The agent had 
died of it three days before. 

134 


HATTERAS 


Hatteras recovered from the fever, but not from the 
impression. It left him with a prevailing sense of horror 
and, at first, with a sense of disgust too. 

“It’s an obscene country,” he would say. But he 
stayed in it, for he had no choice. All the money which 
he could save went to the support of his family, and for 
six years the firm he served moved him from district to 
district, from factory to factory. 

Now the second item of his stock-in-trade was a gift 
of tongues, and about this time it began to bring him 
profit. Wherever Hatteras was posted, he managed to 
pick up a native dialect, and with the dialect inevitably a 
knowledge of native customs. Dialects are numerous on 
the west coast, and at the end of six years Hatteras could 
speak as many of them as some traders could enumerate. 
Languages ran in his blood; he acquired a reputation for 
knowledge and was offered service under the Niger Pro¬ 
tectorate, so that when, two years later, Walker came out 
to Africa to open a new branch factory at a settlement 
on the Bonny River, he found Hatteras stationed in com¬ 
mand there. 

Hatteras, in fact, went down to Bonny River town to 
meet the steamer which brought his friend. 

“I say, Dick, you look bad,” said Walker. 

"‘People are not, as a rule, offensively robust about 
these parts.” 

“I know that; but you’re the weariest bag of bones 
I’ve ever seen.” 

“Well, look at yourself in a glass a year from now for 
my double,” said Hatteras, and the pair went up river 
together. 

“Your factory is next to the Residency,” said Hat- 
135 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


teras. “There’s a compound to each running down to 
the river, and there’s a palisade between the compounds. 
I’ve cut a little gate in the palisade as it will shorten the 
way from one house to the other.” 

The wicket gate was frequently used during the next 
few months—indeed more frequently than Walker 
imagined. He was only aware that, when they were both 
at home, Hatteras would come through it of an evening 
and smoke on his verandah. There he would sit for 
hours cursing the country, raving about the lights of 
Piccadilly Circus, and offering his immortal soul in ex¬ 
change for a comic opera tune played upon a barrel-organ. 
Walker possessed a big atlas, and one of Hatteras’ chief 
diversions was to trace with his finger a bee-line across 
the African continent and the Bay of Biscay until he 
reached London. 

More rarely Walker would stroll over to the Residency, 
but he soon came to notice that Hatteras had a distinct 
preference for the factory and for the factory verandah. 
The reason for the preference puzzled Walker consid¬ 
erably. He drew a quite erroneous conclusion that Hat¬ 
teras was hiding at the Residency—well, someone whom 
it was prudent, especially in an official, to conceal. He 
abandoned the conclusion, however, when he discovered 
that his friend was in the habit of making solitary ex¬ 
peditions. At times Hatteras would be absent for a couple 
of days, at times for a week, and, so far as Walker could 
ascertain, he never so much as took a servant with him 
to keep him company. He would simply announce at 
night his intended departure, and in the morning he would 
be gone. Nor on his return did he ever offer to Walker 
any explanation of his journeys. On one occasion, how- 

136 


HATTERAS 


ever, Walker broached the subject. Hatteras had come 
back the night before, and he sat crouched up in a deck 
chair, looking intently into the darkness of the forest. 

“I say,” asked Walker, “isn’t it rather dangerous to 
go slumming about West Africa alone?” 

Hatteras did not reply for a moment. He seemed not 
to have heard the suggestion, and when he did speak it 
was to ask a quite irrelevant question. 

“Have you ever seen the Horse Guards’ Parade on a 
dark rainy night?” he asked; but he never moved his 
head, he never took his eyes from the forest. “The wet 
level of ground looks just like a lagoon and the arches 
a Venice palace above it.” 

“But look here, Dick!” said Walker, keeping to his 
subject, “you never leave word when you are coming back. 
One never knows that you have come back until you 
show yourself the morning after.” 

“I think,” said Hatteras slowly, “that the finest sight 
in the world is to be seen from the bridge in St. James’ 
Park when there’s a State Ball on at Buckingham Palace 
and the light from the windows reddens the lake and the 
carriages glance about the Mall like fireflies.” 

“Even your servants don’t know when you come back,” 
said Walker. 

“Oh,” said Hatteras quietly, “so you have been asking 
questions of my servants?” 

“I had a good reason,” replied Walker. “Your safety”; 
and with that the conversation dropped. 

Walker watched Hatteras. Hatteras watched the forest. 
A West African mangrove forest night is full of the 
eeriest, queerest sounds that ever a man’s ears hearkened 
to. And the sounds come not so much from the birds 
137 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


or the soughing of branches; they seem to come from the 
swamp-life underneath the branches, at the roots of the 
trees. There’s a ceaseless stir as of a myriad reptiles 
creeping in the slime. Listen long enough and you will 
fancy that you hear the whirr and rush of innumerable 
crabs, the flapping of innumerable fish. Now and again 
a more distinctive sound emerges from the rest—the 
croaking of a bull-frog, the whining cough of a crocodile. 
At such sounds Hatteras would start up in his chair and 
cock his head like a dog in a room that hears another 
dog barking in the street. 

“Doesn’t it sound damned wicked ?” he said with a 
queer smile of enjoyment. 

Walker did not answer. The light from a lamp in the 
room behind them struck obliquely upon Hatteras’ face 
and slanted off from it in a narrowing column until it van¬ 
ished in a yellow thread among the leaves of the trees. 
It showed that the same enjoyment which rang in Hat¬ 
teras’ voice was alive upon his face. His eyes, his ears, 
were alert, and he gently opened and shut his mouth with 
a little clicking of the teeth. In some horrible way he 
seemed to have something in common with, he appeared 
almost to participate in, the activity of the swamp. Thus 
had Walker often seen him sit, but never with the light 
so clear upon his face, and the sight gave to him a quite 
new impression of his friend. He wondered whether all 
these months his judgment had been wrong. And out of 
that wonder a new thought sprang into his mind. 

“Dick,” he said, “this house of mine stands between 
your house and the forest. It stands on the borders of 
the trees, on the edge of the swamp. Is that why you pre¬ 
fer it to your own?” 


138 


HATTERAS 


Hatteras turned his head quickly towards his compan¬ 
ion, almost suspiciously. Then he looked back into the 
darkness, and after a little said: 

“It’s not only the things you care about, old man, which 
tug at you; it’s the things you hate as well. I hate this 
country. I hate these miles and miles of mangroves, and 
yet I am fascinated. I can’t get the forests and the 
undergrowth and the swamp out of my mind. I dream of 
them at night. I dream that I am sinking into that 
black oily batter of mud. Listen,” and he suddenly broke 
off with his head stretched forward. “Doesn’t it sound 
wicked?” 

“But all this talk about London ?” cried Walker. 

“Oh, don’t you understand?” interrupted Hatteras 
roughly. Then he changed his tone and gave his reason 
quietly. “One has to struggle against a fascination of 
that sort. It’s devil’s work. So for all I am worth I 
talk about London.” 

“Look here, Dick,” said Walker. “You had better 
get leave and go back to the old country for a spell.” 

“A very solid piece of advice,” said Hatteras, and he 
went home to the Residency. 

The next morning he had again disappeared. But 
Walker discovered upon his table a couple of new volumes, 
and glanced at the titles. They were Burton’s account 
of his pilgrimage to El Medinah and Mecca. 

Five nights afterwards Walker was smoking a pipe 
on the verandah when he fancied that he heard a rubbing, 
scuffling sound as if someone very cautiously was climb¬ 
ing over the fence of his compound. The moon was low 
in the sky and dipping down toward the forest, indeed 
139 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


the rim of it touched the treetops so that while a full 
half of the enclosure was lit by the yellow light, that half 
which bordered on the forest was inky black in shadow, 
and it was from the furthest corner of this second half 
that the sound came. Walker leaned forward listening. 
He heard the sound again, and a moment after a second 
sound, which left him in no doubt. For in that dark 
corner he knew that a number of palisades for repairing 
the fence were piled, and the second sound which he heard 
was a rattle as someone stumbled against them. Walker 
went inside and fetched a rifle. 

When he came back he saw a negro creeping across the 
bright open space towards the Residency. Walker hailed 
to him to stop. Instead the negro ran. He ran towards 
the wicket gate in the palisade. Walker shouted again; 
the figure only ran the faster. He had covered half 
the distance before Walker fired. He clutched his right 
forearm with his left hand, but he did not stop. Walker 
fired again, this time at his legs, and the man dropped 
to the ground. Walker heard his servants stirring as he 
ran down the steps. He crossed quickly to the negro 
and the negro spoke to him, but in English, and with the 
voice of Hatteras. 

‘Tor God’s sake keep your servants off!” 

Walker ran to the house, met his servants at the foot 
of the steps and ordered them back. He had shot at a 
monkey he said. Then he returned to Hatteras. 

“Dicky, are you hurt?” he whispered. 

“You hit me each time you fired, but not very badly, 

I think.” 

He bandaged Hatteras’ arm and thigh with strips of 
his shirt, and waited by his side until the house was 
140 


HATTERAS 


quiet. Then he lifted him and carried him across the 
enclosure to the steps, and up the steps into his bedroom. 
It was a long and fatiguing process. For one thing Wal¬ 
ker dared make no noise and must needs tread lightly 
with his load; for another, the steps were steep and 
rickety, with a narrow balustrade on each side waist-high. 
It seemed to Walker that the day would dawn before he 
reached the top. Once or twice Hatteras stirred in his 
arms, and he feared the man would die then and there. 
For all the time his blood dripped and pattered like heavy 
raindrops on the wooden steps. 

Walker laid Hatteras on his bed and examined his 
wounds. One bullet had passed through the fleshy part 
of the forearm, the other through the fleshy part of his 
right thigh. But no bones were broken and no arteries 
cut. Walker lit a fire, baked some plantain leaves, and 
applied them as a poultice. Then he went out with a 
pail of water and scrubbed down the steps. Again he 
dared not make any noise; and it was close on daybreak 
before he had done. His night’s work, however, was not 
ended. He had still to cleanse the black stain from Hat- 
teras’ skin, and the sun was up before he stretched a rug 
upon the ground and went to sleep with his back against 
the door. 

“Walker,” Hatteras called out in a loud voice, an hour 
or so later. 

Walker woke up and crossed over to the bed. 

“Dicky, I’m frightfully sorry. I couldn’t know it was 
you.” 

“That’s all right, Jim. Don’t you worry about that. 
What I wanted to say was that nobody had better know. 
It wouldn’t do, would it, if it got about?” 

141 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


“Oh, I am not so sure. People would think it a rather 
creditable proceeding.” 

Hatteras shot a puzzled look at his friend. Walker, 
however, did not notice it, and continued, “I saw Bur¬ 
ton’s account of his pilgrimage in your room; I might 
have known that journeys of the kind were just the sort 
of thing to appeal to you.” 

“Oh, yes, that’s it,” said Hatteras, lifting himself up 
in bed. He spoke eagerly—perhaps a thought too eagerly. 
“Yes, that’s it. I have always been keen on understanding 
the natives thoroughly. It’s after all no less than one’s 
duty if one has to rule them, and since I could speak their 
lingo—” he broke off and returned to the subject which 
had prompted him to rouse Walker. “But, all the same, 
it wouldn’t do if the natives got to know.” 

“There’s no difficulty about that,” said Walker. “I’ll 
give out that you have come back with the fever and that 
I am nursing you. Fortunately there’s no doctor handy 
to come making inconvenient examinations.” 

Hatteras knew something of surgery, and under his 
directions Walker poulticed and bandaged him until he 
recovered. The bandaging, however, was amateurish, 
and, as a result, the muscles contracted in Hatteras’ thigh 
and he limped—ever so slightly, still he limped—he limped 
to his dying day. He did not, however, on that account 
abandon his explorations, and more than once Walker, 
when his lights were out and he was smoking a pipe on the 
verandah, would see a black figure with a trailing walk 
cross his compound and pass stealthily through the wicket 
in the fence. Walker took occasion to expostulate with 
his friend. 

“It’s too dangerous a game for a man to play for any 
142 


HATTERAS 


length of time. It is doubly dangerous now that you 
limp. You ought to give it up.” 

Hatter as made a strange reply. 

‘I’ll try to,” he said. 

Walker pondered over the words for some time. He 
set them side by side in his thoughts with that confession 
which Hatteras had made to him one evening. He asked 
himself whether, after all, Hatteras’ explanation of his 
conduct was sincere, whether it was really a desire to 
know the native thoroughly which prompted those mys¬ 
terious expeditions, and then he remembered that he him¬ 
self had first suggested the explanation to Hatteras. 
Walker began to feel uneasy—more than uneasy, actually 
afraid on his friend’s account. Hatteras had acknowl¬ 
edged that the country fascinated him, and fascinated 
him through its hideous side. Was this masquerading as 
a black man a further proof of the fascination? Was it, 
as it were, a step downwards towards a closer association ? 
Walker sought to laugh the notion from his mind, but it 
returned and returned, and here and there an incident 
occurred to give it strength and colour. 

For instance, on one occasion after Hatteras had been 
three weeks absent, Walker sauntered over to the Resi¬ 
dency towards four o’clock in the afternoon. Hatteras 
was trying cases in the Court-house, which formed the 
ground floor of the Residency. Walker stepped into the 
room. It was packed with a naked throng of blacks, and 
the heat was overpowering. At the end of the hall sat 
Hatteras. His worn face shone out amongst the black 
heads about him white and waxy like a gardenia. 

Walker, however, thinking that the Court would rise, 
determined to wait for a little. But, at the last moment, 
143 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


a negro was put up to answer to a charge of participation 
in fetish rites. The case seemed sufficiently clear from 
the outset, but somehow Hatteras delayed its conclusion. 
There was evidence and unrebutted evidence of the usual 
details—human sacrifice, mutilations, and the like, but 
Hatteras pressed for more. He sat until it was dusk, 
and then had candles brought into the Court-house. He 
seemed indeed not so much to be investigating the negro’s 
guilt as to be adding to his own knowledge of fetish 
ceremonials. And Walker could not but perceive that 
he took more than a merely scientific pleasure in the in¬ 
crease of his knowledge. His face appeared to smooth 
out, his eyes became quick, interested, almost excited; 
and Walker again had the queer impression that Hatteras 
was in spirit participating in the loathsome ceremonies, 
and participating with an intense enjoyment. In the end 
the negro was convicted and the Court rose. But he 
might have been convicted a good three hours before. 
Walker went home shaking his head. He seemed to be 
watching a man deliberately divesting himself of his hu¬ 
manity. It seemed as though the white man was am¬ 
bitious to decline into the black. Hatteras was growing 
into an uncanny creature. His friend began to foresee a 
time when he should hold him in loathing and horror. 
And the next morning helped to confirm him in that 
forecast. 

For Walker had to make an early start down river for 
Bonny town, and as he stood on the landing-stage Hat¬ 
teras came down to him from the Residency. 

“You heard that negro tried yesterday ?” he asked with 
an assumption of carelessness. 

“Yes, and condemned. What of him?” 

144 


HATTERAS 


“He escaped last night. It’s a bad business, isn’t it?” 

Walker nodded in reply and his boat pushed off. But 
it stuck in his mind for the greater part of that day that 
the prison adjoined the Court-house and so formed part 
of the ground floor of the Residency. Had Hatteras con¬ 
nived at his escape? Had the judge secretly set free the 
prisoner whom he had publicly condemned? 

The question troubled Walker considerably during his 
month of absence, and stood in the way of his business. 
He learned for the first time how much he loved his 
friend, and how eagerly he watched for that friend’s 
advancement. Each day added to his load of anxiety. 
He dreamed continually of a black-painted man slipping 
among the tree-boles nearer and nearer, towards the red 
glare of a fire in some open space secure amongst the 
swamps, where hideous mysteries had their celebration. 
He cut short his business and hurried back from Bonny. 
He crossed at once to the Residency and found his friend 
in a great turmoil of affairs. 

“Jim,” said Hatteras, starting up, “I’ve got a year’s 
leave; I’m going home.” 

“Dicky!” cried Walker, and he nearly wrung Hatteras’ 
hand from his arm. “That’s grand news.” 

“Yes, old man, I thought you would be glad; I sail in 
a fortnight.” And he did. 

For the first month Walker was glad. A year’s leave 
would make a new man of Dick Hatteras, he thought, or 
at all events restore the old man, sane and sound, as he 
had been before he came to the West African coast. Dur¬ 
ing the second month Walker began to feel lonely. In 
the third he bought a banjo and learnt it during the fourth 
and fifth. During the sixth he began to say to himself, 
145 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


“What a time poor Dick must have had all those years 
with these cursed forests about him. I don’t wonder—I 
don’t wonder.” He turned disconsolately to his banjo 
and played for the rest of the year—all through the wet 
season while the rain came down in a steady roar and only 
the curlews cried—until Hatteras returned. He returned 
at the top of his spirits and health. Of course he was 
hall-marked West African, but no man gets rid of that 
stamp. Moreover there was more than health in his ex¬ 
pression. There was a new look of pride in his eyes, and 
when he spoke of a bachelor it was in terms of sympa¬ 
thetic pity. 

“Jim,” said he, after five minutes of restraint, “I am 
engaged to be married.” 

Jim danced round him in delight. “What an ass I 
have been,” he thought; “why didn’t I think of that cure 
myself?” And he asked, “When is it to be?” 

“In eight months. You’ll come home and see me 
through.” 

Walker agreed and for eight months listened to praises 
of the lady. There were no more solitary expeditions. 
In fact, Hatteras seemed absorbed in the diurnal discov¬ 
ery of new perfections in his future wife. 

“Yes, she seems a nice girl,” Walker commented. He 
found her upon his arrival in England more human than 
Hatteras’ conversation had led him to expect, and she 
proved to him that she was a nice girl. For she listened 
for hours to his lectures on the proper way to treat Dick 
without the slightest irritation and with only a faintly 
visible amusement. Besides she insisted on returning 
with her husband to Bonny River, which was a sufficiently 
courageous thing to undertake. 

146 


HATTERAS 


For a year in spite of the climate the couple were com¬ 
monplace and happy. For a year Walker clucked about 
them like a hen after its chickens, and slept the sleep of 
the untroubled. Then he returned to England and from 
that time made only occasional journeys to West Africa. 
Thus for a while he almost lost sight of Hatteras, and 
consequently still slept the sleep of the untroubled. One 
morning, however, he arrived unexpectedly at the settle¬ 
ment and at once called on Hatteras. He did not wait to 
be announced, but ran up the steps outside the house 
and into the dining-room. He found Mrs. Hatteras cry¬ 
ing. She dried her eyes, welcomed Walker, and said that 
she was sorry, but her husband was away. 

Walker started, looked at her eyes, and asked hesitat¬ 
ingly whether he could help. Mrs. Hatteras replied with 
an ill-assumed surprise that she did not understand. 
Walker suggested that there was trouble. Mrs. Hatteras 
denied the truth of the suggestion. Walker pressed the 
point and Mrs. Hatteras yielded so far as to assert that 
there was no trouble in which Hatteras was concerned. 
Walker hardly thought it the occasion for a parade of 
manners, and insisted on pointing out that his knowledge 
of her husband was intimate and dated from his school¬ 
days. Therefore Mrs. Hatteras gave way. 

“Dick goes away alone/’ she said. “He stains his skin 
and goes away at night. He tells me that he must, that 
it’s the only way by which he can know the natives, and 
that so it’s a sort of duty. He says the black tells nothing 
of himself to the white man—never. You must go 
amongst them if you are to know them. So he goes, and 
I never know when he will come back. I never know 
whether he will come back.” 

147 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


“But he has done that sort of thing on and off for 
years, and he has always come back,” replied Walker. 

“Yes, but one day he will not.” 

Walker comforted her as well as he could, praised 
Hatteras for his conduct, though his heart was hot against 
him, spoke of risks that every man must run who serves 
the Empire. “Never a lotus closes, you know,” he 
quoted, and went back to the factory with the conscious¬ 
ness that he had been telling lies. 

It was a sense of duty that prompted Hatteras, of that 
Walker assured himself he was certain, and he waited— 
he waited from darkness to daybreak in his compound, 
for three successive nights. 

On the fourth he heard the scuffling sound at the corner 
of the fence. The night was black as the inside of a 
coffin. Half a regiment of men might have passed him 
and he not have seen them. Accordingly he walked cau¬ 
tiously to the palisade which separated the enclosure of 
the Residency from his own, felt along it until he reached 
the little gate and stationed himself in front of it. In a 
few moments he thought that he heard a man breathing, 
but whether to the right or the left he could not tell; and 
then a groping hand lightly touched his face and drew 
away again. Walker said nothing, but held his breath 
and did not move. The hand was stretched out again. 
This time it touched his breast and moved across it until 
it felt a button of Walker’s coat. Then it was snatched 
away, and Walker heard a gasping indraw of the breath 
and afterwards a sound as of a man turning in a flurry. 
Walker sprang forward and caught a naked shoulder with 
one hand, a naked arm with the other. 

“Wait a bit, Dick Hatteras,” he said. 

148 


HATTERAS 


There was a low cry, and then a husky voice addressed 
him respectfully as “Daddy” in trade-English. 

“That won’t do, Dick,” said Walker. 

The voice babbled more trade-English. 

“If you’re not Dick Hatteras,” continued Walker, 
tightening his grasp, “you’ve no manner of right here. 
I’ll give you till I count ten, and then I shall shoot.” 

Walker counted up to nine aloud and then- 

“Jim,” said Hatteras in his natural voice. 

“That’s better,” said Walker. “Let’s go in and talk.” 

He went up the steps and lighted the lamp. Hatteras 
followed him and the two men faced one another. For 
a little while neither of them spoke. Walker was repeat¬ 
ing to himself that this man with the black skin, naked 
except for a dirty loincloth and a few feathers on his 
head, was a white man married to a white wife who was 
sleeping—nay, more likely crying—not thirty yards away. 

Hatteras began to mumble out his usual explanation of 
duty and the rest of it. 

“That won’t wash,” interrupted Walker. “What is 
it? A woman?” 

“Good Heaven, no!” cried Hatteras suddenly. It was 
plain that that explanation was at all events untrue. “Jim, 
I’ve a good mind to tell you all about it.” 

“You have got to,” said Walker. He stood between 
Hatteras and the steps. 

“I told you how this country fascinated me in spite of 
myself,” he began. 

“But I thought,” interrupted Walker, “that you had 
got over that since—why, man, you are married,” and he 
came across to Hatteras and shook him by the shoulder. 
“Don’t you understand? You have a wife!” 

149 



TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


“I know,” said Hatteras. “But there are things 
deeper at the heart of me than the love of woman, and 
one of these things is the love of horror. I tell you, it 
bites as nothing else does in the world. It’s like ab¬ 
sinthe, that turns you sick at the beginning and that you 
can’t do without once you have got the taste of it. Do 
you remember my first landing? It made me sick enough 

at the beginning, you know. But now-” He sat 

down in a chair and drew it close to Walker. His voice 
dropped to a passionate whisper, he locked and unlocked 
his fingers with feverish movements, and his eyes shifted 
and glittered in an unnatural excitement. 

“It’s like going down to hell and coming up again and 
wanting to go down again. Oh, you’d want to go down 
again. You’d find the whole earth pale. You’d count 
the days until you went down again. Do you remember 
Orpheus? I think he looked back, not to see if Eurydice 
was coming after him, but because he knew it was the 
last glimpse he would get of hell.” At that he broke 
off and began to chant in a crazy voice, wagging his head 
and swaying his body to the rhythm of the lines— 

Quum subita incautum dementia cepit amantem 
Ignoscenda quidem scirent si ignoscere manes; 
Restitit Eurydicenque suam jam luce sub ipsa 
Immemor heu! victusque animi respexit. 

“Oh, stop that!” cried Walker, and Hatteras laughed. 
“For God’s sake, stop it!” 

For the words brought back to him in a flash the vision 
of a classroom with its chipped desks ranged against the 
varnished walls, the droning sound of the form-mas¬ 
ter’s voice, and the swish of lilac bushes against the 
150 


HATTERAS 


lower window panes on summer afternoons. Then he 
said, “Oh, go on, and let’s have done with it.” 

Hatteras took up his tale again, and it seemed to Walker 
that the man breathed the very miasma of the swamp 
and infected the room with it. He spoke of leopard so¬ 
cieties, murder clubs, human sacrifices. He had witnessed 
them at the beginning, he had taken his share in them 
at the last. He told the whole story without shame, with 
indeed a glowing enjoyment. He spared Walker no 
details. He related them in their loathsome complete¬ 
ness until Walker felt stunned and sick. “Stop,” he said 
again, “stop! That’s enough.” 

Hatteras, however, continued. He appeared to have 
forgotten Walker’s presence. He told the story to him¬ 
self, for his own amusement, as a child will, and here 
and there he laughed, and the mere sound of his laugh¬ 
ter was inhuman. He only came to a stop when he saw 
Walker hold out to him a cocked and loaded revolver. 

“Well?” he asked. “Well?” 

Walker still offered him the revolver. 

“There are cases, I think, which neither God’s law nor 
man’s law seems to have provided for. There’s your 
wife, you see, to be considered. If you don’t take it I 
shall shoot you myself now, here, and mark you I shall 
shoot you for the sake of a boy I loved at school in the 
old country.” 

Hatteras took the revolver in silence, laid it on the 
table, fingered it for a little. 

“My wife must never know,” he said. 

“There’s the pistol. Outside’s the swamp. The swamp 
will tell no tales, nor shall I. Your wife need never 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


Hatteras picked up the pistol and stood up. 

“Good-bye, Jim/’ he said, and half pushed out his 
hand. Walker shook his head, and Hatteras went out 
on the verandah and down the steps. 

Walker heard him climb over the fence and then fol¬ 
lowed as far as the verandah. In the still night the 
rustle and swish of the undergrowth came quite clearly 
to his ears. The sound ceased, and a few minutes after¬ 
wards the muffled crack of a pistol-shot broke the silence 
like the tap of a hammer. The swamp, as Walker prophe¬ 
sied, told no tales. Mrs. Hatteras gave the one explana¬ 
tion of her husband’s disappearance that she knew, and 
returned broken-hearted to England. There was some 
loud talk about the self-sacrificing energy which makes 
the English a dominant race, and there you might think 
is the end of the story. 

But some years later Walker went trudging up the 
Ogowe River in Congo Franqais. He travelled as far as 
Woermann’s factory in Njob Island, and, having trans¬ 
acted his business there, pushed up stream in the hope 
of opening the upper reaches for trade purposes. He 
travelled for a hundred and fifty miles in a little stern- 
wheel steamer. At that point he stretched an awning 
over a whale-boat, embarked himself, his banjo and eight 
blacks from the steamer, and rowed for another fifty 
miles. There he ran the boat’s nose into a clay cliff close to 
a Fan village, and went ashore to negotiate with the chief. 

There was a slip of forest between the village and 
the river banks, and while Walker was still dodging the 
palm creepers which tapestried it he heard a noise of 
lamentation. The noise came from the village, and was 
general enough to assure him that a chief was dead. It 
152 


HATTERAS 


rose in a chorus of discordant howls, low in note and very 
long drawn out—wordless, something like the howls of 
an animal in pain, and yet human by reason of their 
infinite melancholy. 

Walker pushed forward, came out upon a hillock 
fronting the palisade which closed the entrance to the 
single street of huts, and passed down into the village. 
It seemed as though he had been expected. For from 
every hut the Fans rushed out towards him, the men 
dressed in their filthiest rags, the women with their faces 
chalked and their heads shaved. They stopped, however, 
on seeing a white man, and Walker knew enough of their 
tongue to ascertain that they looked for the coming of 
the witch-doctor. The chief, it appeared, had died a 
natural death, and since the event is of sufficiently rare 
occurrence in the Fan country, it had promptly been at¬ 
tributed to witchcraft, and the witch-doctor had been 
sent for to discover the criminal. The village was con¬ 
sequently in a lively state of apprehension, for the end 
of those who bewitch chiefs to death is not easy. The 
Fans, however, politely invited Walker to inspect the 
corpse. It lay in a dark hut, packed with the corpse’s 
relations, who were shouting to it at the top of their 
voices on the off-chance that its spirit might think bet¬ 
ter of its conduct and return to the body. They ex¬ 
plained to Walker that they had tried all the usual varie¬ 
ties of persuasion. They had put red pepper into the 
chief’s eyes while he was dying; they had propped open 
his mouth with a stick; they had burned fibres of the 
oil-nut under his nose. In fact they had made his death 
as uncomfortable as possible, but none the less he had 
died. 


153 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


The witch-doctor arrived on the heels of the explana¬ 
tion, and Walker, since he was powerless to interfere, 
thought it wise to retire for a time. He went back to 
the hillock on the edge of the trees. Thence he looked 
across and over the palisade, and had the whole length 
of the street within his view. 

The witch-doctor entered in from the opposite end to 
the beating of many drums. The first thing Walker 
noticed was that he wore a square-skirted eighteenth cen¬ 
tury coat and a tattered pair of brocaded knee breeches 
on his bare legs; the second was that he limped—ever so 
slightly. Still he limped, and with the right leg. Walker 
felt a strong desire to see the man’s face, and his heart 
thumped within him as he came nearer and nearer down 
the street. But his hair was so matted about his cheeks 
that Walker could not distinguish a feature. “If I was 
only near enough to see his eyes,” he thought. But he 
was not near enough, nor would it have been prudent 
for him to have gone nearer. 

The witch-doctor commenced the proceedings by ring¬ 
ing a handbell in front of every hut. But that method 
of detection failed to work. The bell rang successfully 
at every door. Walker watched the man’s progress, 
watched his trailing limb,, and began to discover familiari¬ 
ties in his manner: “Pure fancy,” he argued with him¬ 
self. “If he had not limped I should have noticed noth- 
mg. 

Then the doctor took a wicker basket, covered with 
a rough wooden lid. The Fans gathered in front of him; 
he repeated their names one after the other, and at each 
name he lifted the lid. But that plan appeared to be no 
improvement, for the lid never stuck. It came off readily 
154 


HATTERAS 


at each name. Walker, meanwhile, calculated the dis¬ 
tance a man would have to cover who walked across 
country from Bonny River to the Ogowe, and he re¬ 
flected with some relief that the chances were several 
thousand to one that any man who made the attempt, 
be he black or white, would be eaten on the way. 

The witch-doctor turned back the big square cuffs of 
his sleeves as a conjurer will do, and again repeated the 
names. This time, however, at each name he rubbed 
the palms of his hands together. Walker was seized 
with a sudden longing to rush down into the village and 
examine the man’s right forearm for a bullet mark. The 
longing grew on him. The witch-doctor went steadily 
through the list. Walker rose to his feet and took a 
step or two down the hillock, when, of a sudden, at one 
particular name, the doctor’s hands flew apart and waved 
wildly about him. A single cry from a single voice went 
up out of the group of Fans. The group fell back and 
left one man standing alone. He made no defence, no 
resistance. Two men came forward and bound his hands 
and his feet and his body with tie-tie. Then they carried 
him within a hut. 

“That’s sheer murder,” thought Walker. He could 
not rescue the victim, he knew. But he could get a 
nearer view of the witch-doctor. Already the man was 
packing up his paraphernalia. Walker stepped back 
among the trees, and running with all his speed, made the 
circuit of the village. He reached the further end of 
the street just as the witch-doctor walked out into the 
open. 

Walker ran forward a yard or so until he, too, stood 
plain to see on the level ground. The witch-doctor did 
155 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


see him and stopped. He stopped only for a moment 
and gazed earnestly in Walker’s direction. Then he went 
on again towards his own hut in the forest. 

Walker made no attempt to follow him. “He has seen 
me/’ he thought. “If he knows me he will come down 
to the river bank to-night.” Consequently, he made the 
black rowers camp a couple of hundred yards down stream. 
He himself remained alone in his canoe. 

The night fell noiseless and black, and the enclosing 
forest made it yet blacker. A few stars burned in the 
strip of sky above his head. Those stars and the glim¬ 
mering of the clay bank to which the boat was moored 
were the only light which Walker had. It was as dark as 
that night when Walker waited for Hatteras at the wicket 
gate. 

He placed his gun and a pouch of cartridges on one 
side, an unlighted lantern on the other, and then he took 
up his banjo, and again he waited. He waited for a 
couple of hours, until a light crackle as of twigs snapping 
came to him out of the forest. Walker struck a chord 
on his banjo, and played a hymn tune. He played, “Abide 
with me,” thinking that some picture of a home, of a 
Sunday evening in England’s summer time, perhaps of 
a group of girls singing about a piano, might flash into 
the darkened mind of the man upon the bank, and draw 
him as with cords. The music went tinkling up and 
down the river, but no one spoke, no one moved upon 
the bank. So Walker changed the tune, and played a 
melody of the barrel organs and Piccadilly Circus. He 
had not played more than a dozen bars, before he heard 
a sob from the bank, and then the sound of something 
sliding down the clay. The next instant, a figure shone 
156 


HATTERAS 


black against the clay. The boat lurched under the 
weight of a foot upon the gunwale, and a man plumped 
down in front of Walker. 

“Well, what is it?” asked Walker, as he laid down his 
banjo and felt for a match in his pocket. 

It seemed as though the words roused the man to a 
perception that he had made a mistake. He said as much 
hurriedly in trade-English, and sprang up as though he 
would leap from the boat. Walker caught hold of his 
ankle. 

“No, you don’t,” said he; “you must have meant to 
visit me. This isn’t Henley,” and he jerked the man 
back into the bottom of the boat. 

The man explained that he had paid a visit out of the 
purest friendliness. 

“You’re the witch-doctor, I suppose,” said Walker. 

The other replied that he was, and proceeded to state 
that he was willing to give information about much that 
made white men curious. He would explain why it was 
of singular advantage to possess a white man’s eyeball, 
and how very advisable it was to kill anyone you caught 
making Itung. The danger of passing near a cotton 
tree which had red earth at the roots provided a subject 
which no prudent man should disregard; and Tando, 
with his driver ants, was worth conciliating. The witch¬ 
doctor was prepared to explain to Walker how to con¬ 
ciliate Tando. Walker replied that it was very kind of 
the witch-doctor, but Tando did not really worry him. 
He was, in fact, very much more worried by an inability 
to understand how a native so high up the Ogowe River 
had learned to speak trade-English. 

The witch-doctor waved the question aside, and re- 

157 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


marked that Walker must have enemies. “Pussin bad 
too much,” he called them. “Pussin woh-woh. Berrah 
well! Ah send grand krau-krau and dem pussin die one 
time.” 

Walker could not recollect for the moment any “pussin” 
whom he wished to die one time, whether from grand 
krau-krau or any other disease. “Wait a bit,” he con¬ 
tinued, “there is one man—Dick Hatteras!” and he 
struck the match suddenly. The witch-doctor started 
forward as though to put it out. 

Walker, however, had the door of the lantern open. 
He set the match to the wick of the candle, and closed 
the door fast. The witch-doctor drew back. Walker 
lifted the lantern and threw the light on his face. The 
witch-doctor buried his face in his hands, and supported 
his elbows on his knees. Immediately Walker darted 
forward a hand, seized the loose sleeve of the witch¬ 
doctor’s coat, and slipped it back along his arm to 
the elbow. It was the sleeve of the right arm, and there 
on the fleshy part of the forearm was the scar of a 
bullet. 

“Yes,” said Walker. “By God, it is Dick Hatteras!” 

“Well?” cried Hatteras, taking his hands from his 
face. “What the devil made you tum-tum Tommy At¬ 
kins’ on the banjo? Damn you!” 

“Dick, I saw you this afternoon.” 

“I know, I know. Why on earth didn’t you kill me 
that night in your compound?” 

“I mean to make up for that mistake to-night!” 

Walker took his rifle on to his knee. Hatteras saw 
the movement, leaned forward quickly, snatched up the 
rifle, snatched up the cartridges, thrust a couple of car- 

158 


HATTERAS 

tridges into the breech, and handed the loaded rifle back 
to his old friend. 

“That’s right,” he said. “I remember. There are 
some cases neither God’s law nor man’s law has quite 
made provision for.’ ” And then he stopped, with his 
finger on his lip. “Listen!” he said. 

From the depths of the forest there came faintly, very 
sweetly the sound of church-bells ringing—a peal of 
bells ringing at midnight in the heart of West Africa. 
Walker was startled. The sound seemed fairy work, 
so faint, so sweet was it. 

“It’s no fancy, Jim,” said Hatteras, “I hear them 
every night, and at matins and vespers. There was a 
Jesuit monastery here two hundred years ago. The bells 
remain, and some of the clothes.” He touched his coat 
as he spoke. “The Fans still ring the bells from habit. 
Just think of it! Every morning, every evening, every 
midnight, I hear those bells. They talk to me of little 
churches perched on hillsides in the old country, of haw¬ 
thorn lanes, and women—English women. English 
girls—thousands of miles away, going along them to 
church. God help me! Jim, have you got an English 
pipe ?” 

“Yes; an English briarwood and some bird’s-eye.” 

Walker handed Hatteras his briarwood and his pouch 
of tobacco. Hatteras filled the pipe, lit it at the lantern, 
and sucked at it avidly for a moment. Then he gave a 
sigh and drew in the smoke more slowly and yet more 
slowly. 

“My wife?” he asked at last, in a low voice. 

“She is in England. She thinks you dead.” 

Hatteras nodded. 


159 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


“There’s a jar of Scotch whisky in the locker behind 
you,” said Walker. 

Hatteras turned round, lifted out the jar and a couple 
of tin cups. He poured whisky into each and handed 
one to Walker. 

“No, thanks,” said Walker. “I don’t think I will.” 

Hatteras looked at his companion for an instant. Then 
he emptied deliberately both cups over the side of the 
boat. Next he took the pipe from his lips. The tobacco 
was not half consumed. He poised the pipe for a little in 
his hand. Then he blew into the bowl and watched the 
dull red glow kindle into sparks of flame as he blew. 
Very slowly he tapped the bowl against the thwart of 
the boat until the burning tobacco fell with a hiss into 
the water. He laid the pipe gently down and stood up. 

“So long, old man,” he said, and sprang out on the 
clay. Walker turned the lantern until the light made a 
disc upon the bank. 

“Good-bye, Jim,” said Hatteras, and he climbed up 
the bank until he stood in the light of the lantern. Twice 
Walker raised the rifle to his shoulder, twice he lowered 
it. Then he remembered that Hatteras and he had been 
at school together. 

“Good-bye, Dicky,” he cried, and fired. Hatteras 
tumbled down to the boat-side. The blacks down river 
were roused by the shot. Walker shouted to them to 
stay where they were, and as soon as their camp was 
quiet he stepped ashore. He filled up the whisky jar 
with water, tied it to Hatteras’ feet, shook his hand, 
and pushed the body into the river. The next morning 
he started back to Fernan Vaz. 


160 


THE RANSOM 

By CUTLIFFE HYNE 

M ETHUEN wriggled himself into a corner of 
the hut, rested his shoulders against the adobe 
wall, and made himself as comfortable as the 
raw-hide thongs with which he was tied up would per¬ 
mit. “Well, Calvert,” said he, “I hope you quite realise 
what an extremely ugly hole we’re in?” 

“Garcia will hang the pair of us before sunset,” I 
replied, “and that’s a certainty. My only wonder is we 
haven’t been strung up before this.” 

“You think a rope and a tree’s a sure thing, do you? 
I wish I could comfort myself with that idea. I wouldn’t 
mind a simple gentlemanly dose of hanging. But there 

are more things in heaven and earth, Calvert-” He 

broke off and whistled drearily. 

I moistened my dry, cracked lips, and asked him husk¬ 
ily what he meant. 

“Torture, old man. That’s what we’re being saved 
for, I’m very much afraid. A Peruvian guerilla is never 
a gentle-minded animal at the best of times, and Garcia 
is noted as being the most vindictive brute to be found 
between the Andes and the Pacific. Then if you’ll kindly 
remember how you and I have harried him, and shot 
down his men, and cut off his supplies, and made his life 
a torment and a thing of tremors for the last four weeks, 
you’ll see he had got a big bill against us. If he’d hated 
161 



TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


us less, he’d have had us shot at sight when we were 
caught; as it is, I’m afraid he felt that a couple of bullets 
in hot blood wouldn’t pay off the score.” 

“If he thinks the matter over calmly, he’ll not very 
well avoid seeing that if he wipes us out there’ll be re¬ 
prisals to be looked for.” 

“And a fat lot,” replied Methuen grimly, “he’ll care 
for the chance of those. If we are put out of the way, 
he knows quite well that there are no two other men in 
the Chilian Service who can keep him on the trot as we 
have done. No, sir. We can’t scare Garcia with that 
yarn. You think that because we’re alive still there’s 
hope. Well, I’ve sufficient faith in my theory for this: 
If anyone offered me a shot through the head now, I’d 
accept it, and risk the chance.” 

“You take the gloomy view. Now the man’s face is 
not altogether cruel. There’s humour in it.” 

“Then probably he’ll show his funniness when he takes 
it out of us,” Methuen retorted. “Remember that pun¬ 
ishment in the ‘Mikado’ ? That had ‘something humorous’ 
in it. Boiling oil, if I don’t forget.” 

Involuntarily I shuddered, and the raw-hide ropes cut 
deeper into my wrists and limbs. I had no great dread 
of being killed in the ordinary way, or I should not have 
entered the Chilian Army in the middle of a hot war; 
and I was prepared to risk the ordinary woundings of 
action in return for the excitements of the fight. But 
to be caught, and held a helpless prisoner, and be de¬ 
liberately tortured to death by every cruelty this malig¬ 
nant fiend, Garcia, could devise, was a possibility I had 
not counted on before. In fact, as the Peruvians had 
repeatedly given out that they would offer no quarter to 
162 


THE RANSOM 


us English in the Chilian Service, we had all of us nat¬ 
urally resolved to die fighting rather than be taken. And, 
indeed, this desperate feeling paid very well, since on 
two separate occasions when Methuen and myself had 
been cornered with small bodies of men, and would have 
surrendered if we could have been guaranteed our lives, 
we went at them each time so furiously that on each 
occasion we broke through and escaped. But one thinks 
nothing of the chances of death and maiming at those 
times. There is a glow within one’s ribs which scares 
away all trace of fear. 

“I suppose there’s no chance of rescue?” I said. 

“None whatever,” said Methuen, with a little sigh. 
“Think it over, Calvert. We start out from the hacienda 
with an escort of five men, sing out our adios, and ride 
away to enjoy a ten days’ leave in the mountains. The 
troops are left to recruit; for ten days they can drop us 
out of mind. Within twelve hours of our leaving them, 
Garcia cleverly ambushes us in a canon where not three 
people pass in a year. The poor beggars who form our 
escort are all gastados” 

“Yes, but are you sure of that?” I interrupted. “I 
saw them all drop off their horses when we were fired 
upon, but that doesn’t prove they were dead. Some 
might have been merely wounded, and when the coast 
cleared, it is just possible they crawled back to our post 
with the news. Still, I own it’s a small chance.” 

“And you may divest yourself of even that thin rag of 
hope. Whilst you were being slung senseless across a 
horse, I saw that man without the ears go round with a 
machete, and—well, when the brute had done, there was 
163 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


no doubt about the poor fellows being as dead as lumps 
of mud. Ah, and talk of the devil-” 

The earless man swung into the hut. 

“Buenos, Senores,” said he mockingly. ‘You will have 
the honour now of being tried, and I’m sure I hope you 
will be pleased with the result.” 

“I suppose we shall find that out later,” said Methuen 
with a yawn; “but anyway, I don’t think much of your 
hospitality. A cup of wine now after that ugly ride 
we’ve had to-day would come in very handy, or even a 
nip of aguardiente would be better than nothing.” 

“I fancy it might be a waste of good liquor,” was the 
answer; “but you must ask Garcia. He will see to your 
needs.” 

A guard of twelve ragged fellows, armed with carbine 
and machete, had followed the earless man into the hut, 
and two of them, whilst he talked, had removed the seiz¬ 
ings from our knees and ankles. They helped us to our 
feet, and we walked with them into the dazzling sunshine 
outside. 

“I’ll trouble some of you for my hat,” said Methuen, 
when the glare first blazed down on him; and then, as 
no one took any notice of the request, he lurched against 
the earless man with a sudden swerve, and knocked his 
sombrero on to the brown baked turf. “Well, I’ll have 
yours, you flea-ridden ladron,” said he; “it’s better than 
nothing at all. Pick up the foul thing, and shake it, and 
put it on my head.” 

The guerilla bared his teeth like an animal, and drew 
a pistol. I thought he would have shot my comrade out 
of hand, and by his look I could see that Methuen ex¬ 
pected it. Indeed, he had deliberately invited the man 
164 


THE RANSOM 


to that end. But, either because the nearness of Garcia 
and fear of his discipline stayed him, or through thought 
of a finer vengeance which was to come, the earless 
man contented himself by dealing a battery of kicks and 
oaths, and bidding our guards to ward us more care¬ 
fully. 

In this way, then, we walked along a path between two 
fields of vines, and passed down the straggling street of 
the village which the guerillas had occupied, and brought 
up in a little plaza which faced the white-walled chapel. 
In the turret a bell was tolling dolefully with slow strokes, 
and as the sound came to me through the heated air, it 
did not require much imagination to frame it into an 
omen. In the centre of the plaza was a vast magnolia 
tree, filled with scented wax-like flowers, and splashed 
with cones of corral-pink. 

We drew up before the piazza of the principal house. 
Seated under its shade in a split-cane rocker, Garcia 
awaited us, a small, meagre, dark man, with glittering 
teeth, and fingers lemon-coloured from cigarette juice. 

He stared at us and spat; and the trial, such as it was, 
began. 

I must confess that the proceedings astonished me. 
Animus there certainly was; the guerillas as a whole were 
disposed to give us short shrift; but their chief insisted on 
at least some parade of justice. The indictment was set 
forward against us: We had shot, hanged, and harried, 
and in fact used all the harshness of war. Had we been 
Chilians in the Chilian Service, this might have been par¬ 
donable; but we were aliens from across the sea; mere 
freebooters, fighting, not for a country, but each for his 
own hand; and as such we were beyond the pale of mili- 

165 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


tary courtesy. We had earned a punishment. Had we 
any word to speak why this should not be given? 

Garcia looked towards us expectantly, and then set 
himself to roll a fresh cigarette. 

I shrugged my shoulders. It seemed useless to say 
anything. 

Methuen said: “Look here, sir! You’ve got us, there 
is no mistake about that. It seems to me you’ve two 
courses before you, and they are these: Either, you can 
kill us, more or less barbarously, in which case you will 
raise a most pestilential hunt at your heels; or, you can 
put us up to ransom. Now neither Calvert here, nor 
myself, are rich men; but if you choose to let us go with 
sound skins, we’re prepared to pay ten thousand Chilian 
dollars apiece for our passports. Now, does that strike 
you?” 

Garcia finished rolling his cigarette, and lit it with 
care. He inhaled a deep breath of smoke. 

“Senor,” he said (the words coming out from between 
his white teeth with little puffs of vapour), “you do not 
appear to understand. You fight as a soldier of fortune, 
and I am merely in arms as a patriot. I am no huckster 
to traffic men’s lives for money, nor am I a timorous fool 
to be scared into robbing a culprit of his just dues.” 

“Very well, then,” said Methuen, “murder the pair 
of us.” 

Garcia smiled unpleasantly. “You may be a very brave 
man,” said he, “but you are not a judicious one. To a 
judge less just than myself this insolence might have 
added something to your punishment; but as it is I shall 
overlook what you have said, and only impose the pen¬ 
alty I had determined upon before you spoke.” 

166 


THE RANSOM 


He lifted his thin yellow fingers, and drew a fresh 
breath of smoke. Then he waved the cigarette towards 
the magnolia tree in the centre of the plaza. “You see 
that bough which juts out towards the chapel ?” 

“It’s made for a gallows,” said Methuen. 

“Precisely,” said the guerilla, “and it will be used as 
one inside ten minutes. I shall string one of you up by 
the neck, to dangle there between heaven and earth. The 
other man shall have a rifle and cartridges, and if, stand¬ 
ing where he does now, he can cut with a bullet the rope 
with which his friend is hanged, then you shall both go 
free.” 

“I hear you say it,” said Methuen. “In other words 
you condemn one of us to be strangled slowly without 
chance of reprieve. But what guarantee have we that 
you will not slit the second man’s throat after you have 
had your sport out of him?” 

Garcia sprang to his feet with a stamp of passion, and 
the chair rolled over backwards. “You foul adventurer!” 
he cried. “You paid man-killer!” and then he broke off 
with a bitter “Pah!” and folded his arms, and for a min¬ 
ute held silence till he got his tongue in hand again. 
“Senor,” he said coldly, “my country’s wrongs may break 
my heart, but they can never make me break my word. 
I may be a hunted guerilla, but I still remain a gentle¬ 
man.” 

“I beg your pardon,” said Methuen. 

“We will now,” continued Garcia icily, “find out which 
of you two will play which part. Afterwards I will add 
another condition which may lend more skill to what 
follows. I will not coerce you. Kindly choose between 
yourselves which of you will hang and which will shoot.” 
167 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


My comrade shrugged his shoulders. “I like you, 
Calvert, old man,” said he, “but I’m not prepared to 
dance on nothing for you.” 

“It would be simplest to toss for exit,” I said. 

“Precisely; but, my dear fellow, I have both hands 
trussed up, and no coin.” 

“Pray let me assist you,” said Garcia. “Senor Calvert, 
may I trouble you for an expression of opinion?” 

He leant over the edge of the piazza, and span a dollar 
into the air. I watched it with a thumping heart, and 
when for an instant it paused, a dazzling splash of bright¬ 
ness against the red-tiled roof, I cried: “Heads!” 

The coin fell with a faint thud in the dust a yard from 
my feet. 

“Well?” said Methuen. 

“I congratulate you, old fellow. I swing.” 

He frowned and made no reply. Garcia’s voice broke 
the silence. “Bueno, Senor Methuen,” he said. “I ad¬ 
vise you to shoot straight, or you will not get home even 
now. You remember I said there was still another con¬ 
dition. Well, here you are: you must cut your friend 
down with a bullet before he is quite dead, or I’ll string 
you up beside him.” 

Methuen let up a short laugh. “Remember what I 
said about that fellow in ‘the Mikado,’ Calvert? You see 
where the ‘humour’ comes in? We’ve had that coin spun 
for nothing. You and I must change positions.” 

“Not at all. I take what I’ve earned.” 

“But I say yes. It works this way: I took it that the 
man who was hanging stood a delicate chance anyway, 
and I didn’t feel generous enough to risk it. But now 
the Senor here has put in the extra clause, the situation 
168 


THE RANSOM 


is changed altogether. You aren’t a brilliant shot, old 
man, but you may be able to cut me down with a bullet if 
you remember what you’re firing for, and shoot extra 
straight. But it’s a certain thing that I couldn’t do it if I 
blazed away till Doomsday. The utmost I could manage 
would be to fluke a pellet into your worthy self. So you see 
I must wear the hemp, and you must apply your shoulder 
to the rifle butt. Laugh, you fool,” he added in English. 
“Grin, and say something funny, or these brutes will 
think we care for them.” 

But I was incapable of further speech. I could have 
gibed at the prospect of being hanged myself, but the 
horror of this other ordeal turned me sick and dumb. 
And at what followed I looked on mutely. 

There was a well at one side of the plaza, and the 
earless man went and robbed the windlass of its rope. 
With clumsy landsman’s fingers he formed a noose, took 
it to the great magnolia tree, and threw the loose end 
over the projecting branch. The bell of the little white 
chapel opposite went on tolling gravely, and they marched 
my friend up to his fate over the sun-baked dust. They 
passed a thong round his ankles; the earless man 
fitted the noose to his throat; a dozen of the guerillas 
with shouts and laughter laid hold of the hauling part 
of the line; and then a voice from behind fell upon my 
ear. Garcia was speaking to me. With a strain I dragged 
my eyes away from the glare of the plaza, and listened. 
He was smiling wickedly. 

“-, and so your pluck has oozed away?” he was 

saying, as the cigarette smoke billowed up from between 
the white walls of his teeth. “Well, of course, if you 
do not care for the game, you can throw up your hand 
169 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 

at once. You’ve only to say the word, and you can be 
dangling on that bough there inside a couple of minutes. 
It’s quite strong enough to carry more fruit than it will 
bear just now. But it’s rather hard on your friend not 
to try-” 

My wits came to me again. “You dolt!” I cried; “how 
can I shoot with my arms trussed up like this? If the 
whole thing is not a mockery, cut me adrift and give me 
a rifle.” 

He beckoned to one of his men, and the fellow came 
up and cut off the lashings from my wrists and elbows; 
and then, with a sour smile, he motioned to some of the 
others, who drew near and held their weapons at the 
ready. “I dare wager, Senor Calvert,” he said, “that if 
you’d me for a mark you would not score a miss. So I 
wish to insure that you do not shoot in this direction.” 
He raised his voice, and shouted across the baking sun¬ 
light: “Quite ready here, amigos. So up with the 
target.” 

Now up to this point I am free to own that since our 
capture I had cut a pretty poor figure. I had not whined, 
but at the same time I had not seen my way to put on 
Methuen’s outward show of careless brazen courage. 
But when I watched the guerillas tighten on the rope 
and sway him up till his stretched-out feet swung a couple 
of hand-spans above the ground, then my coolness re¬ 
turned to me, and my nerves set like icicles in their 
sockets. He was sixty yards away, and at that distance, 
the well-rope dwindled to the bigness of a shoemaker’s 
thread. Moreover, the upper two-thirds of it was almost 
invisible, because it hung before a background of shadows. 
170 



THE RANSOM 


But the eighteen inches above my poor friend’s head stood 
out clear and distinct against the white walls of the 
chapel beyond, and as it swayed to pulsing of the body 
beneath, it burnt itself upon my eyesight till all the rest 
of the world was blotted out in a red haze. I never knew 
before how thoroughly a man could concentrate himself. 

They handed me the rifle, loaded and cocked. It was 
a single-shot Winchester, and I found out afterwards, 
though I did not know it then, that either through fiendish 
wish to further hamper my aim, or through pure forget¬ 
fulness, they had left the sights cocked up at three 
hundred yards. But that did not matter; the elevation 
was a detail of minor import; and besides, I was handling 
the weapon as a game shot fires, with head up, and eyes 
glued on the mark, and rifle-barrel following the eyes by 
instinct alone. You must remember that I had no sta¬ 
tionary mark to aim at. My poor comrade was writhing 
and swaying at the end of his tether, and the well-rope 
swung hither and thither like some contorted pendulum. 

Once I fired, twice I fired, six times, ten times, and 
still the rope remained uncut, and the bullets rattled harm¬ 
lessly against the white walls of the chapel beyond. With 
the eleventh shot came the tinkle of broken glass, and 
the bell, after a couple of hurried nervous clangs, ceased 
tolling altogether. With the thirteenth shot a shout went 
up from the watching crowd. I had stranded the rope, 
and the body which dangled beneath the magnolia tree 
began slowly to gyrate. 

Then came a halt in the firing. I handed the Win¬ 
chester back to the fellow who was reloading, but some¬ 
how or other the exploded cartridge had jammed in the 
breach. I danced and raged before him in my passion 
171 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


of hurry, and the cruel brutes round yelled in ecstasies 
of merriment. Only Garcia did not laugh. He re-rolled 
a fresh cigarette, with his thin yellow fingers, and leis¬ 
urely rocked himself in the split-cane chair. The man 
could not have been more unmoved if he had been over¬ 
looking a performance of Shakespeare. 

At last I tore the Winchester from the hands of the 
fellow who was fumbling with it, and clawed at the 
jammed cartridge myself, breaking my nails and smear¬ 
ing the breech-lock with blood. If it had been welded 
into one solid piece, it could scarcely have been firmer. 
But the thrill of the moment gave my hands the strength 
of pincers. The brass case moved from side to side; it 
began to crumple; and I drew it forth and hurled it from 
me, a mere ball of shapeless, twisted metal. Then one 
of the laughing brutes gave me another cartridge, and 
once more I shouldered the loaded weapon. 

The mark was easier now. The struggles of my poor 
friend had almost ceased, and though the well-rope still 
swayed, its movements were comparatively rhythmical, 
and to be counted upon. I snapped down the sights, put 
the butt-plate to my shoulder, and cuddled the stock with 
my cheek. Here for the first time was a chance of some¬ 
thing steadier than a snap-shot. 

I pressed home the trigger as the well-rope reached 
one extremity of its swing. Again a few loose ends 
sprang from the rope, and again the body began slowly 
to gyrate. But was it Methuen I was firing to save, or 
was I merely wasting shot to cut down a mass of cold 
dead clay? 

I think that more agony was compressed for me into 
a few minutes then than most men meet with in a life- 
172 


THE RANSOM 


time. Even the onlooking guerillas were so stirred that 
for the first time their gibing ceased, and two of them of 
their own accord handed me cartridges. I slipped one 
home and closed the breech-lock. The perspiration was 
running in a stream from my chin. Again I fired. Again 
the well-rope was snipped, and I could see the loosened 
strands ripple out as a snake unwraps itself from a branch. 

One more shot. God in heaven, I missed! Why was 
I made to be a murderer like this? 

Garcia’s voice came to me coldly. “Your last chance, 
Senor. I can be kept waiting here no longer. And I 
think you are wasting time. Your friend seems to have 
quitted us already.” 

Another cartridge. I sank to one knee and rested my 
left elbow on the other. The plaza was hung in breath¬ 
less silence. Every eye was strained to see the outcome 
of the shot. The men might be inhuman in their cruelty, 
but they were human enough in their curiosity. 

The body span to one end of its swing: I held my 
fire. It swung back, and the rifle muzzle followed. Like 
some mournful pendulum it passed through the air, and 
then a glow of certainty filled me like a drink. I knew I 
could not miss that time; and I fired; and the body, in a 
limp and shapeless heap, fell to the ground. 

With a cry I threw the rifle from me and raced across 
the sunlit dust. Not an arm was stretched out to stop 
me. Only when I had reached my friend and loosened 
that horrible ligature from his neck, did I hear voices 
clamouring over my fate. 

“And now this other Inglese, your excellency,” the 
earless man said. “Shall we shoot him from here, or 
shall we string him up in the other’s place?” 

173 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


But the answer was not what the fellow expected. 
Garcia replied to him in a shriek of passion. “You foul, 
slaughtering brute,” he cried, “another offer like that 
and I’ll pistol you where you stand. You heard me pass 
my word: do you dream that I could break it? They 
have had their punishment, and if we see one another 
again, the meeting will be none of my looking for. We 
leave this puebla in five minutes. See to your duties. 
Go.” 

The words came to me dully through the heated air. 
I was almost mad with the thought that my friend was 
dead, and that the fault was mine, mine, mine alone! 

I listened for his breaths; they did not come. I felt 
for a heart-throb; there was not so much as a flutter. His 
neck was seared by a ghastly ring. His face was livid. 
And yet I would not admit even then that he was dead. 
With a cry I seized his arms, and moved them first above 
his head till he looked like a man about to dive, and then 
clapped them against his sides, repeating this an infinite 
number of times, praying that the airs I drew through his 
lungs might blow against some smouldering spark of hu¬ 
manity, and kindle it once more into life. 

The perspiration rolled from me; my mouth was as a 
sandpit; the heavy scent of the magnolia blossoms above 
sickened me with its strength; the sight departed from 
my eyes. I could see nothing beyond a small circle of the 
hot dust around, which waved and danced in the sunlight, 
and the little green lizards which came and looked at me 
curiously, and forgot that I was human. 

And then, of a sudden, my comrade gave a sob, and 
his chest began to heave of itself without my laborious 
aid. And after that for a while I knew very little more. 
174 


THE RANSOM 


The sun-baked dust danced more wildly in the sunshine, 
the lizards changed to darker colours, the light went out, 
and when next I came to my senses Methuen was sitting 
up with one hand clutching at his throat, looking at me 
wildly. 

“What has happened?” he gasped. “I thought I was 

dead, and Garcia had hanged me. Garcia- No one 

is here. The puebla seems deserted. Calvert, tell me.” 

“They have gone,” I said. “We are alive. We 
will get away from here as soon as you can walk.” 

He rose to his feet, swaying. “I can walk now. But 
what about you?” 

“I am an old man,” I said, “wearily old. In the last 
two hours I have grown a hundred years. But I think 
I can walk also. Yes, look, I am strong. Lean on my 
arm. Do you see that broken window in the chapel? 
When I fired through that, the bell stopped tolling.” 

“Let us go inside the chapel for a minute before we 
leave the village,” said Methuen. “We have had a very 
narrow escape, old man. I—I—feel thankful.” 

There was a faint smell of incense inside that little 
white-walled chapel. The odour of it lingers by me still. 



THE OTHER TWIN 

By EDWIN PUGH 

I T was the hour of siesta. Santa Plaza lay blister¬ 
ing, sweltering, in the white-hot glare of the noon¬ 
tide sun. The dust lay thick on the roads and 
terraces, the copings and the roofs of the houses, like 
untrodden snow. The sea shone like a shield of brass 
reflecting a brassy sky. There was not the least sign of 
movement anywhere. 

Then Franker, the Englishman, came limping along 
the Lido, sat down in the shadow of the old sea-wall, 
and examined with grave solicitude a swollen and blis¬ 
tered foot swathed in filthy, blood-stained rags. 

This Franker had once been a well-known figure in all 
the ports of those far-off southern seas. It was whis¬ 
pered that in the long ago he had been a gentleman. Now 
he was just the sport of circumstance, a jack of all 
trades, so long as they were indifferent honest; sailorman, 
stock-rider, storekeeper, croupier, crimp, anything that 
happened along in his hour of need. But lately he had 
disappeared from his old haunts, and it was unlikely that 
any of his old acquaintances would have recognised in 
that ragged and gaunt, unwashed and black-bearded was¬ 
trel on the beach the spruce adventurer of former days. 

He had the look of a hunted creature. There was fear 
in his eyes. Even as he sat there nursing his aching foot, 
parched and hungry, haggard and weary, his head was 
176 


THE OTHER TWIN 


perpetually turning from side to side, and ever and again 
he looked over his shoulder, to left and right, as if he 
were in dread expectation that at any moment some enemy 
might creep upon him unawares. And, indeed, he was 
in parlous case. For he had killed a man, not in itself an 
exceptional incident of course—only in this instance the 
man was one of twins, and the other twin had vowed a 
vendetta against him. 

These twins were named Bibi and Bobo, and the ex¬ 
traordinary likeness between them was accentuated by 
their habit of always dressing alike, talking alike, think¬ 
ing alike. There were some who said that they could 
distinguish one twin from the other, but these were fool¬ 
ish, vainglorious men. The thing was manifestly im¬ 
possible. Even Franker did not know whether it was 
Bibi or Bobo he had killed. 

It happened in a gambling den in Suranim, up coun¬ 
try. They were playing the childish game of boule, and 
some silly dispute had arisen. Franker had lost his tem¬ 
per, and knocked one of the twins down. For once in 
a way the other twin had not been present, or most as¬ 
suredly Franker would have been chived in the back be¬ 
fore he could turn round. As it was, he saw his fallen 
adversary rise slowly, slowly draw a red smear across his 
face with the back of his hand, and then quicken on a 
sudden into antic activity. There was the flash of a 
knife. Franker dodged. The other men stood back to 
watch the fun—not to see fair play. Fair play was a 
jewel of little value in the estimation of that crew. A 
moment Franker hesitated, then whipped out his gun 
and fired point-blank at the twin. He dropped dead. 
Before the smoke had cleared away or the echoes of the 
1 77 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


report had subsided into stillness, Franker had left the 
gambling-house and was running for his life into the 
wilderness. 

There, for three days, he lost himself. That was his 
idea: to lose himself. He wanted to be lost, utterly 
lost to the world. For he knew that so long as the other 
twin lived his own chances of living were reduced to the 
last recurring decimal. Bibi or Bobo—whichever it was 
—would never rest until he had wrought vengeance on 
his brother’s murderer. Though it wasn’t a murder, of 
course, but a duel in which each had taken the same risk 
of death. If Franker had not killed Bibi or Bobo, Bibi 
or Bobo would have killed him. He wished he knew 
which of the twins it was he had killed. So idiotic not 
to know. So confusing. It made your head ache, won¬ 
dering. And in your sleep you dreamed of horrible, two- 
headed monsters coming at you crabwise, with arms and 
legs all round them. 

On the third day of his sojourn in the wilderness the 
other twin had very nearly caught him napping. He had 
sunk down exhausted in a sandy hollow fringed with 
palms, and for a moment closed his eyes. And in that 
moment the redness of his lowered eyelids had been sud¬ 
denly clouded by a shadow. In an instant he was on his 
feet, wide awake again. And there was the figure of 
the other twin in the act of flinging itself upon him. 
He fired an aimless shot at that black apparition, then 
bolted. 

And all that day and all that night he had wound and 
wound an intorted course through virgin forest, hoping 
thus to shake off his pursuer. And all that day and all 
that night he had known that his pursuer followed him, 
i 7 8 


THE OTHER TWIN 


shadowed him, stalked him, with a merciless delight in 
that persecution born of an insatiate hate. 

Next day Franker, having doubled on his tracks, found 
himself on a quayside, and had shipped as a forecastle 
hand on an old iron hooker bound for the Caribs with 
a mixed cargo. He never knew or cared what that mixed 
cargo consisted of. He was too busy sleeping, when he 
wasn’t too sore from being kicked into wakefulness, to 
bother about trivial details. He could have left the ship 
at the first of the Caribs, but an island is a prison, and 
his yearning was for wide free spaces where a man can 
at least get a run for his money. So he had returned on 
the hooker, and had been paid off with the lurid compli¬ 
ments of the purser, and was once more adrift. 

But the story of his wanderings and adventures over 
the greater part of the southern hemisphere would fill 
many books. Months passed, a year passed, two years, 
and all the while Franker was dogged by the avenger. 
Ever and again, just when he thought that he had at last 
shaken off that deadly pursuit, the other twin turned up 
again. And gradually it was borne in upon him that the 
other twin might have killed him long since had he 
wished. He had had numberless opportunities, and had 
not taken them. This puzzled Franker a bit, and then 
he hit upon the truth. There is more joy in the hunting 
than in the killing. There is more cat-like satisfaction 
in the slow torture of its victim than in the crunching up 
of its dead bones. He began to think of the other twin 
as a cat-like creature, exercising a cruelty of the mind 
far more subtle and devilish than any mere crude cruelty 
of tooth and claw. When the avenger tired of the sport, 
then he would strike. And not till then. Meanwhile, 
179 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


Franker was condemned to a daily round of unremitting 
vigilance, ceaseless watchfulness, unending apprehension. 

He had been a big man, strong and fearless, with bold 
eyes and the voice of a bull. Now he had become a shuf¬ 
fling, whimpering, trembling thing of nerves and tears, 
who dared look no one in the face lest it should be the 
face of his enemy. In the old days, with no other re¬ 
sources than his health and vigour, bodily and mental, 
he had used to take chances with an overbearing reck¬ 
lessness, and thrust and curse his way through the mob 
of other roustabouts like unto himself, with whom he 
had fought for the means of existence. And he had been 
—he realised that now—quite happy then. There were 
times when he told himself that he would stand fast 
against his pursuer, force him into the open, then turn 
upon him and rend him, and so make an end of this 
long-drawn-out agony. But when the moment came his 
wits fled, he was distraught and afraid, he could think 
only of flight. 

It was now a full fortnight since he had seen Bibi— 
or Bobo. But there had been other fortnights during 
which he had not seen him. And always, inevitably, he 
had reappeared. So would he reappear again. 

Franker gazed out from the shadow of the old sea¬ 
wall across the glittering, limitless sea, and wished that 
he might drown himself in its depths. But he was not 
yet quite mad enough for that. Though life had be¬ 
come as a nightmare to him, and death as the awakening 
to the cool, calm peace of dawn; though life offered noth¬ 
ing but torment, and death offered surcease of pain, he 
still clung to life. It was in the nature of his being to 
cling to life. He was not of the stuff that gives in. 

180 


THE OTHER TWIN 


But if only he could rest awhile! If only he could 
lie still in some sheltered place, safe from his enemy, 
and thus regain his old control over his faculties, re¬ 
cuperate his strength! 

At the western end of the Lido, where the coast swept 
in a wide curve to the lighthouse and the harbour, there 
was a long white wall. And as he remembered what that 
wall enclosed, what it signified, Franker had an inspira¬ 
tion. His face was suddenly irradiated. He laughed 
aloud. What a fool!—God in Heaven!—what a fool he 
had been not to think of that before! He rose on tremu¬ 
lous legs and began to shamble along the beach towards 
that far-off haven of refuge. 

The prison official, in his gaudy livery of gold and 
scarlet and his immense cocked hat, conducted him to the 
chief inspector’s office. 

“Yes?” 

Franker desired to be sworn. He had a crime to con¬ 
fess: it had troubled his conscience for years. 

“Yes?” 

An affair of opium smuggling, ship’s papers forged, 
and customs burked. It was a true story enough, only 
Franker himself had not been implicated in it. The police 
had been so long on the track of that crime they had given 
it up as hopeless. And now here there was the chief crim¬ 
inal, a fine fat bird, dropping into the net of his own free 
will. The chief inspector rubbed his dry palms together 
as he thought of the luscious report he would send to 
the magistracy. 

Then he committed Franker to the custody of another 
prison official, less gaudy than the first, and Franker was 
led away to the cell. 

181 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 

This was' a big, bare, barn-like place of stone, that 
sometimes contained as many as twenty prisoners huddled 
indiscriminately together. But just now crime was slack. 
Franker had the whole cell to himself. 

As the gaoler slammed the door on him he fell on his 
knees with a weeping face, and offered up thanks for this 
blessed refuge, this safe harbour of retreat from his 
relentless enemy, this sanctuary. Here, at last, he was 
free from the fear of pursuit. Here, during the year or 
two of his imprisonment, he could rest and sleep, rest 
his mind and find his sleep that sweet relief from the 
tortures of the last two years which would gradually 
restore him again to health and sanity. 

Even as he prayed he toppled down face forward and 
lay there quite still, breathing softly, evenly, in peaceful 
slumber. 

The light was fading, there was a red stain of sunset 
on the wall when he awoke. It was a rattling and 
clanging of bolts and chains that had roused him. He 
sat up, blinking stupidly, at first not knowing where 
he was. Then, as he remembered, he shed tears of joy 
again, and clasped his hands together in an access of 
delight. 

The sounds drew nearer. The heavy, barred door of 
the prison chamber was flung open. He saw the burly 
figure of a gaoler over-shadowing another smaller figure 
that seemed to be precipitated from behind into the misty 
vastness of the cell. It fell head-long at Franker’s feet, 
and lay there stirring feebly like a wounded beetle. 

Franker watched his writhings . . . and a slow, cold 
horror grew upon him. 

His fellow-prisoner raised himself on all fours, then 
182 


THE OTHER TWIN 

sat up and squatted there, cross-legged, like a Chinese 
bonze. 

It was Bibi—or Bobo. 

Franker uttered a cry. 

“And hast thou found me, O mine enemy!” 

The other twin had leapt to his feet. He shrank back, 
crouching, snarling, spitting like a cat. The moment for 
the happy dispatch was come at last. He drew his knife 
and fingered its keen blade lovingly, then came mincing 
on tiptoe towards Franker. 

As Franker’s hands closed round his throat he drove 
the blade deep into Franker’s breast. 


THE NARROW WAY 

By R. ELLIS ROBERTS 


I 

A T his confirmation he had annoyed the Bishop of 
London (at that time it was Frederick Temple) 
by insisting on taking the additional names of 
Alfonso Mary Alexander. He had surprised him by 
the resolute manner in which he had answered his ques¬ 
tions about the origin of taking names at confirmation; 
and enraged him by his explanation that he desired to 
be called Alexander in memory of that great Pope, the 
Lord Alexander VI, who had put the whole Christian 
world under an obligation by his discovery of the devo¬ 
tion of the Angelus. “This devotion,” the boy murmured 
to the astounded Bishop, “as your Lordship no doubt 
knows, has been from eternity the privilege of the Holy 
Angels, and was not entrusted to men until the proximity 
of the horrible heresies of the German reformation ren¬ 
dered the patronage of Mary necessary for the protection 
of her son.” The Bishop’s chaplain had tried to prevent 
Frank Lascelles’ indiscretion; but Temple’s abrupt gesture 
had hindered his efforts. When Lascelles finished the 
Bishop gazed at him in silence for a minute. 

“Well, I hope you’ll live to grow out of this foolery. 
But you know your rights and you shall have ’em.” 

Temple, was, as his old foes had discovered years 
before, eminently just. 


184 


THE NARROW WAY 


More than twenty years had passed since that con¬ 
firmation. Frank Alfonso Mary Alexander Lascelles 
had gone to Oxford and to Ely, and had been ordained 
to a small country parish in that diocese. After two years 
of his curacy, an injudicious layman presented him to 
the living of S. Uny and S. Petroc in the north of Corn¬ 
wall. He had been there now for over nineteen years. 
When he had come he found his church empty; now it 
was full. It was full of children and boys. Occasionally 
a few mothers, and, when he was sober, the village drunk¬ 
ard, and, when she was penitent, the prostitute from the 
Church Town, came to Mass as well; but generally the 
Church of S. Uny, down by the beach, was filled only by 
children and boys. 

This result Frank Lascelles had been long in attaining. 
The parish he served was predominantly Methodist. He 
had found a congregation of three—the publican, the 
ostler of the hotel, and an old maiden lady who rang 
the bell, and called herself the pew-opener. Lascelles 
soon shocked the respectability of the publican and the 
Protestantism of the ostler: but the old lady remained 
faithful to him. She did not stir when he had the three- 
decker cut down, and a new altar reared at the East end. 
She seemed to welcome the great images, Our Lady of 
the Immaculate Conception, The Sacred Heart, S. Joseph 
and S. Anthony which Lascelles put up in his church. 
She did not care whether he said Mass in Latin or Eng¬ 
lish; and incense and holy water both left her tranquil. 
It was otherwise with the village. Though the Methodists 
never entered the church, except for a wedding or a 
funeral, they thought they had a right to control its serv¬ 
ices and its priest. There were stormy Easter vestries; 
185 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


there was a Protestant churchwarden. One horrible day 
the fishermen broke into the church and took out the 
images and threw them down the cliff: by next week 
new ones were in their places. Lascelles was boycotted 
by his parishioners, except a few would-be bold spirits; 
and was outlawed, in the genial English way, by his 
Bishop; but he stuck at his job, went on saying offices to 
an empty church, and singing Mass to his pew-opener 
and an occasional visitor. Then after five years or so 
the change began. 

It was not along the usual lines of such changes. Gen¬ 
erally priests of Lascelles’ religion are eager, masculine 
people who soon win over the more turbulent elements in 
the parish, and put them, too, in search of the great ad¬ 
venture of Christianity. But Lascelles, though he had 
grown up, still remained the boy who had chosen Liguori 
and Alexander for his patrons. He was obsessed with the 
reality of the spiritual world, of good and evil. His 
pillow was wet with the tears he shed for the sins of his 
parish. He was horrified at the evil of the world, and 
yet constitutionally unable to defy it in any active way. 
He had only one strong human affection—and that was 
a great love for children. 

At first this was not reciprocated. His odd figure, his 
shuffling walk, his stoop and his occasional outbursts of 
anger produced ridicule and fear rather than love. Then 
one child somehow found how large the heart of him was; 
and then another, and then another. He had won the 
children. But this would have availed him little had it 
not been for the arrival at S. Uny of the Rev. Paul Tren- 
growse. Mr. Trengrowse came to minister to the Primi¬ 
tives about three years after Lascelles’ appointment to 
186 


THE NARROW WAY 


the parish. He was young, keen, and sincere. He had 
not been long in the village when the leading members of 
his congregation told him of the sins of the parish priest, 
and horrors of the parish church. Trengrowse prayed 
for light. He disliked interfering with the affairs of an 
alien church; but, if half he was told was true, Lascelles 
must be fought. So he paid a visit to the church, which 
was always open, and was duly distressed at the idols 
he saw there. 

As he was gazing at the smirking fatuity of S. An¬ 
thony, he heard a footstep. It was Lascelles who was 
coming from the sacristy to the altar. Fortunately, be¬ 
fore he began Mass, Lascelles looked down the church 
and saw “a congregation.” So he said Mass in English. 

Now Trengrowse was no ordinary minister. He was 
a man of personal holiness, and of real devotion; and 
that in his spirit which was sincere and mystical recog¬ 
nised in the Popish-seeming priest, muttering his Mass, 
a kindred soul. Lascelles’ absorption in his work, his 
grave, yet joyful solemnity, his keen sense of the other 
world made an immense effect on Trengrowse. The 
Mass proceeded, and when Trengrowse heard “There¬ 
fore with Angels and Archangels and all the Company 
of Heaven,” he felt that he had had the answer to his 
prayer. This man was a Christian, however erroneous 
he might be in details. 

So the next Sunday the Primitives who were hoping 
for a strong sermon against the Scarlet Woman, were 
disagreeably surprised. “Mr. Lascelles may be wrong. 
I think he is wrong, sadly wrong, in many things; but 
he du love the Lord, and he du worship Him. And, 
brethren, no man calls Jesus Lord save by the Holy 
187 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


Ghost. Let us pray for Mr. Lascelles and the church 
people of S. Uny; and that we may all be led along the 
narrow way to everlasting life.” 

Had Trengrowse been a man of less character he might 
have failed in his defence of Lascelles. But he was an 
acceptable preacher, and a man whose plain love of his 
religion it was impossible to doubt. So, first with grum¬ 
bling, later with a ready acquiescence, the villagers of 
S. Uny followed his lead. 

The result was odd. Lascelles attracted the children 
more and more; and his services attracted them. This 
worried Trengrowse not a little; but when one of his 
congregation said scornfully, “Those bit games to the 
church be only fit for babes,” he looked gravely at him 
and replied, “Ah! Eli, but the book says ‘Unless ye be¬ 
come as little children.’ ” This silenced Eli, but it did not 
silence Trengrowse’s own heart. How was it Lascelles 
could do anything with children, a good deal with boys 
up to fifteen or so, and nothing with men and women, and 
little with girls? Lascelles’ own explanation was simple. 
His Bishop would not confirm his children until they were 
thirteen. Lascelles presented them year after year when 
they were six or seven. He preached an amazing sermon 
on the three great aids to the Devil in the parish of S. 
Uny—and the three heads of his sermon were: Lust, 
Hypocrisy and the Lord Bishop. The more respectable of 
the neighbouring clergy were furious, but the Bishop, who 
was a simple, humble-minded man (quite unlike to the 
ex-head-master who had inducted Lascelles), refused to 
take any rotice of the attack; but also refused to relax his 
rule about the age of confirmation candidates. The Arch¬ 
deacon told Lascelles that his parish was the plague-spot 
188 


THE NARROW WAY 

of the diocese, and Lascelles retorted that in a mass of 
corruption any sign of health looks ominous and unusual. 
But, although he kept up a brave front to the disapprovers, 
his failure with his people galled him. He would not 
have minded if they had still been actively hostile. But 
that had long ceased. They were now fond of their priest. 
They liked and shared in his notoriety. They supported 
him against the officials; and when a malicious Protestant 
from London attempted to stir up a revolt against Las¬ 
celles, he was promptly put into the harbour; and Tren- 
growse started a petition to the Bishop, expressing the 
affection “all we, whether church people or Methodists, 
feel for Mr. Lascelles.” 

Lascelles’ philosophy refused to permit him to see in 
his failure evidences of his incapacity for his work. He 
had the proud humility of the perfect priest. Regarding 
himself as a mere channel for divine grace, he forgot that 
his personality was so distinctive that it affected the way 
in which grace reached his people. Once an old friend 
had tried to make him see this; but the task was hopeless. 

“My dear fellow,” said Lascelles, “I don’t see what 
you mean. All they want is the Gospel. And that I give 
them. I say Mass for them. I will hear their confes¬ 
sions. I instruct them. I lead their devotions. All be¬ 
side is mere human embellishment. No doubt a more 
competent man would be more pleasing to them, but he 
could not do more than give them the Gospel, could he?” 

On All Souls’ Day, 1912, Lascelles was depressed. 
Early that morning he had gone up to the cemetery, and 
said a Requiem in the little chapel. Then there had been 
the early Mass at 8.30 in church. The church had been 
full. Not only were all his children there, but there were 
189 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


a good many fathers and mothers: for the services on 
the day of the dead appealed to a deep human instinct 
with a power which not even Lascelles could spoil. The 
Dies Irse, sung in Latin, had sounded oddly from a con¬ 
gregation so predominantly childish: and Lascelles had 
preached a short sermon on the “Significance of Death.” 

“We exaggerate the importance of death. It is to us 
death matters, not to the dead. For them it is a release, 
for us it is a warning. Death of the body is only a 
symbol. It is death of the soul we must fear. Believe 
me, it would be worth while for every one of you in this 
church to die, if by dying, you could bring a soul to 
Jesus. God knows, I would die for you, if that would 
bring you. There are those here to-day—you, Penberthy, 
and you, Trevose—who have not been to Mass since you 
were boys. Make a new resolution to-day, and ask the 
Holy Souls to help you keep it. Come to your duties, 
and return to your church.” 

Lascelles felt at the time that his appeal lacked force. 
He knew that after Mass, Penberthy would say to Tre¬ 
vose : 

“Bootivul service, bean’t it, Tom?” 

“Iss—it be that. I du like it for once or twice. But 
for usual give me the chapel. It be more nat’ral like.” 

“Iss—it be. Poor Mr. Lascelles, I did think he would 
have a slap at us.” 

“Iss—it be his way. My gosh! I don’t mind.” 

So Lascelles was depressed. He sat among his books, 
reading a Renascence treatise on “Death.” He thought 
a great deal about death. Sometimes he feared it hor¬ 
ribly. It seemed the great enemy of faith. It was so 
disconcerting a thing, so heartless, so unregarding. At 
190 


THE NARROW WAY 


other times he felt defiant. But never did he reach the 
spirit of S. Francis about death. He was too remote 
from natural life and the events of animal birth and death 
to understand death as an ordinary thing, something not 
less usual than the sunset. 

“It may be”—he read, “that there be more deaths 
than one. For it is evident that some are so hardened 
in sin that the death of the body comes long after the 
man has been really dead. Such men are commonly gay 
and cheerful: for with the death of their soul, has died 
all godly fear, all apprehension of judgment, all hope of 
salvation. They become but as brutes. Wherefore the 
church has always held that heretics, if they be obstinate 
and beyond recall, may be handed over to the secular arm 
for the death of the body. It should not trouble us that 
they display ordinary human virtues: *for these be com¬ 
mon in the unregenerate, and are but devices of the devil 
who would persuade men that religion matters naught. 
They are his children, and may be lawfully treated as 
such by any godly prince. The church herself kills not: 
though the Lord Pope, being a Temporal King, has the 
power of the sword, and may exercise the same.” 

Lascelles put the book down and stared at the fire. 
The words roused a train of thought that almost fright¬ 
ened him. But he was not the man to dismiss any idea 
because it was terrifying. He believed in giving the 
devil his due, and always insisted that all temptations 
should be met boldly, not evaded. He left his chair, and 
knelt at his prie-dieu, looking at the wounds of the great 
Crucifix which hung above it. 

Half an hour later he rose with a look of resolution on 
his face. 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


2 

The first case of the plague, as the villagers insisted 
on calling it, happened just before Epiphany. It attacked 
Penberthy, who had never been ill before; and in four 
days he was dead. His disease puzzled the doctor from 
the market-town, but he put it down as a curious case of 
infantile paralysis. His colleague from Truro, whom he 
consulted after the third case had occurred, insisted that 
the symptoms did not disclose anything more definite than 
shock following on status lymphaticus. The most serious 
thing was, however, not their incapacity to name, but their 
inability to cure the mysterious disease, which was spead- 
ing in S. Uny. Except for a general weariness, a dis¬ 
inclination to move, and a curious “wambling in the 
innards,” there were no definite symptoms at all to go 
on. After the second case they had an inquest, but it 
yielded no results at all, and Dr. Marlowe began to talk 
of getting an expert from London. 

It was not until February, however, that anyone came. 
Then by a fortunate chance Sir Joshua Tomlinson came 
down to S. Ives for a holiday. The “plague” at S. Uny 
had got into the London paper. There had been ten 
deaths, and two women, the first to be attacked, were 
lying seriously ill. Dr. Marlowe called on Sir Joshua, 
and the great physician said he would come over and see 
the patients. Marlowe was glad that chance had sent 
him a great general physician rather than a surgeon or 
a specialist. Although he was willing to defy any special¬ 
ist to find his pet disease in the mysterious sickness that 
had killed the ten fishermen, he was relieved that no 
specialist was to be given the opportunity. 

192 


THE NARROW WAY 


“You see, Lascelles,” he said to the priest, “it’s not as 
if we were in the fifteenth century. We may be in the¬ 
ology, but I’m hanged if we are in medicine. These men 
are dying like savages: but the savage makes up his mind 
he has got to die, and dies through sheer hysteria. These 
fellows want to live. They lust for life.” 

“You are right, Marlowe. Their desire for life is 
a lust. It is scarcely decent in a Christian to cling so to 
this existence. But there—it’s not my business to judge. 
You know, Marlowe, I have sometimes thought this last 
month that this mysterious disease is a judgment on S. 
Uny. It is God’s hand held out over our village. Let 
us pray for those who are dead, and those who are dying, 
and most of all, dear God, for those who are not yet to 
die.” 

Marlowe, though friendly with Lascelles, was more 
than a little afraid of him. The vicar had worked like 
two men during this distress. He had nursed the sick, 
he had consoled the mourners, he had said Masses and 
had a service of general humiliation. Somehow he had 
identified himself with his parish to a degree he had never 
reached before, and S. Uny was grateful to him. But 
the little doctor was rather afraid. Lascelles was strained 
and odd in manner. He spent too long a time in 
prayer, and not long enough at meals or in bed. 

“No, Lascelles. I don’t agree with you there. Oh! 
I’m a good Catholic, I hope, and I know God could inter¬ 
vene; but I don’t see why He should.” 

“No: you don’t see why. No one does, Marlowe, until 
He speaks, and then they are forced to.” 

On the Saturday Sir Joshua came over, he saw 
Mrs. Pentreath and Mrs. Wichelo, and he shook his 
193 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


head over both of them. He asked them questions about 
their diet, and about their way of living, while Marlowe 
stood by, silent and impatient. Then, he said a few 
kindly, cheerful words, and left them in the big room, 
which the vicar had had fitted up as a hospital ward; 
for Marlowe thought the cases were better isolated. 

“Well, sir, what do you think?” 

“What sort of a man is your vicar? He seems liked.” 

“Yes—he is. He’s an odd chap-—a bit mad, I think. 
A very keen Catholic, and very depressed at his failure 
to keep the people.” 

“Ah! they don’t go to church.” 

“Well they do now. They have done since this damned 
illness. He’s been awfully good to them. And the chil¬ 
dren have always gone.” 

“It’s a funny thing, Dr. Marlowe, that no child has 
been ill.” 

“Isn’t it? That’s what I say to young Jones of Truro. 
He will insist on his shock theory, following on status 
lymphaticus. I keep on pointing out to him that most of 
the patients are men who have had shocks every week 
of their lives since they were twelve. They’d have all 
been dead long since.” 

“Yes. I am sure Jones is wrong. But I don’t know 
what this disease is, Dr. Marlowe. I suspect, but I 
don’t know.” 

“Here is the vicar coming, Sir Joshua. Shall I intro¬ 
duce you?” 

“Please do.” 

Lascelles was walking rapidly towards them. He 
looked ill but eager. His eyes were full of a fanatic 
pleasure, a kind of holy rapture that appeared to make 
194 


THE NARROW WAY 

him even taller than he actually was. He acknowledged 
the introduction with a bow, and would have passed on, 
but Sir Joshua stopped him with a question. 

“You have come from your sick people, Mr. Lascelles? ,, 

“Yes. They are no longer sick. I was just in time to 
hear their confessions and give them the viaticum.” 

“Good God!” Sir Joshua was evidently shocked. “It’s 
not ten minutes since we left them.” 

“No? The end has always been very sudden, hasn’t 
it, Marlowe?” 

“Yes. But this is quicker than usual. Do you think, 
Sir Joshua”—and he lowered his voice—“a post¬ 
mortem?” 

“N,o. It would be useless. At least it would be no 
help to me. By the way, Marlowe, how have you entered 
the cause of death?” 

“Well, sir—I’ve frankly put ‘Heart failure, cause un¬ 
known.’ There seemed to be nothing between that and 
‘Act of God.’ ” 

“Ah! Marlowe, that’s what you should have put,” in¬ 
tervened Lascelles. “It is the hand of God—the hand of 
God.” Then, with a bow to Sir Joshua, he hurried away. 

“So your vicar thinks it is the hand of God! He may 
be right. God works through human agents. He is an 
interesting man, Dr. Marlowe.” 

“Yes: he is. But this trouble has worried him fright¬ 
fully. I’m rather nervous for him. Have you got any 
theory, sir? You talked of suspicion.” 

“Well, Dr. Marlowe, I’ll tell you what I think. Your 
patients have been murdered.” 

Marlowe looked at the great physician, as if he was 
afraid for his sanity. 


195 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


“No, Dr. Marlowe, I’m not mad, though I have no 
proof of my assertion. All I ask is this, that I may be 
allowed to see the next patient within at least half an hour 
of the beginning of the illness. By the way, can they 
give me a bed here, do you think? Where do you put 
up?” 

“Oh! I’m staying at the vicar’s. I expect he’d be 
charmed to have you.” 

“No. I don’t think I will stay with Father Lascelles. 
I would rather not. I’ll find a room somewhere. I think 
there will be another case to-morrow night.” 

3 

That Sunday morning Lascelles preached on the “Hand 
of Judgment.” The church was packed. Trengrowse 
had his service at nine and brought all his congregation 
to the Mass at eleven. Lascelles seemed wonderfully 
better. His eye was clearer, his step gayer and his whole 
figure more buoyant. His tone as he gave out his text 
was exultant. 

“They pierced his hands. 

“The symbolism of the Divine Body is strangely ar¬ 
resting. The Jews thought of God as an eye watching, 
caring for them from heaven. We Christians watch 
God—here in the Tabernacle, or in the arms of Mary. 
His care for us we typify by his Hand—the Hand we 
pierced. This last month God has been with us very 
wonderfully. He is always with us in the Holy Sacra¬ 
ment : but lately he has been with us in the Sacrament of 
Death. His Hand of Judgment has been over, and under 
us; it has clasped us—and some of us it has not let go. 

“Our natural feeling is one of fear. We are not used 
196 


THE NARROW WAY 

to such immediate handling as this of our God’s. We 
have most of us tried to apply religion to our life, now 
we have to try and apply our life to religion. God will 
have us think of nothing but Him, speak to none save 
Him, hope for none save Him. His Hand is still with 
us. It will bear yet more away from S. Uny before we 
learn our lesson. Let me help you to learn that lesson 
right. Let us all take care that we renew our trust 
in God, that we recognise His Hand, that we answer His 
Love.” 

Sir Joshua had listened attentively to Lascelles’ ser¬ 
mon. He seemed vaguely disappointed, and he was un¬ 
willing to discuss it with Marlowe afterwards. There 
was no doubt that Lascelles’ almost fatalist attitude, 
while it annoyed the doctor, had a strange welcome from 
the villagers. They turned in a child-like way to the 
words of this man who spoke as one who knew the ways 
and the meaning of the Almighty. Never had Lascelles 
so much real devotion from his people as he secured 
during the “plague.” It was not that they shared his 
feeling of complete abandonment to the Will of God; 
but the fact that he had such a feeling made their fate 
seem more tolerable. 

On Sunday evening there was a new case, as Sir 
Joshua had expected. The disease attacked Mrs. Bodilly, 
the wife of the chief grocer in S. Uny. Marlowe was 
summoned immediately, but he found Sir Joshua already 
at the poor woman’s bedside. 

She was frankly terrified; in this her case differed from 
previous ones, in which the sufferers, though generally 
resentful, had been not the least afraid. Mrs. Bodilly 
had been at Mass that morning. She had got back and 
197 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


prepared the dinner. At tea-time she had “felt queer,” 
but after tea she was better. Then, as she was getting 
ready to go to the special service of Exposition, she fell 
down and had to be carried up to her room by her hus¬ 
band and sons. 

She was, unlike most of the tradesmen’s wives, a 
nominal church woman, but she had never been con¬ 
firmed and rarely went to church. The fit of external 
piety roused in her by the “plague” was frankly based 
on nervous alarm. She felt that God was taking it 
out of S. Uny in this way; and she was anxious to 
escape. 

Her illness found her divided between anger and fear. 
She was angry that her efforts to placate Divine wrath 
had not been most successful—she was terrified of dying, 
terrified still more of death as a punishment. In the 
most desolate way she sought reassurances from Mar¬ 
lowe and Sir Joshua; but neither could give her any 
certain consolation. The disease presented no different 
aspects. It indeed presented no aspect at all, except ex¬ 
treme weakness, astonishing slowness of the pulse, and 
irregular beating of the heart. Although Sir Joshua 
was there within five minutes of the seizure, he admitted 
to Marlowe that he could discover nothing of what he 
suspected. 

“I’ll be frank, Dr. Marlowe, I suspected poison. I 
still suspect it. I believe all these people have been poi¬ 
soned in an extremely subtle way by a man so fanatical 
as to be almost mad. But I can find no trace of the 
poison. In this case, I will, if you will permit me, 
conduct a post-mortem, but I expect I shall fail. If I do, 
I must take my own line, if you wish me to help you.” 
198 


THE NARROW WAY 


“Really, Sir Joshua, you talk more like a detective 
than a physician.” 

“This is a detective’s business, Dr. Marlowe. I wish 
it were not.” 

Before they left Lascelles arrived. He had been sum¬ 
moned by Mr. Bodilly, and he came prepared to give 
Mrs. Bodilly the last rites. As the boy with the light and 
the bell approached the stairs, Sir Joshua whispered to 
Marlowe: 

“Your vicar seems very certain of her death.” 

Marlowe shrugged his shoulders. “We haven’t saved 
a case, you know.” 

The post-mortem yielded no result. That evening 
Marlowe dined with Sir Joshua at the village inn, and 
after dinner the great physician told him of his suspi¬ 
cions. Marlowe listened at first angrily, then with an 
incredulous horror. 

“It can’t be. The man lives for his parish, I tell you. 
Why, he would die for it.” 

“Yes: I believe he would. Had I found what I looked 
for, he certainly would.” 

“But, my dear sir, there isn’t a trace of any known 
drug. There’s no trace of anything.” 

“No. I had expected to find—but never mind. I 
have a great deal of experience, Dr. Marlowe, and I am 
convinced that your vicar has been murdering his parish¬ 
ioners. And to-night I am coming to tell him so. I will 
walk home with you. You may be present or not, as you 
please.” 

4 

Lascelles looked up a little wearily when Sir Joshua had 
finished speaking. 


199 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


“Is that all?” 

Marlowe intervened. 

“Look here, old man—I only came because—you’ll 
forgive me, Sir Joshua—I didn’t want you to be alone 
under this monstrous, this fantastic accusation of Sir 
Joshua’s. You’ve only got to contradict him, and we’ll 

__ ft 

go- 

Lascelles looked gratefully at his friend. 

“Thank you, Marlowe. But Sir Joshua is right in 
telling me his suspicions. You have finished, Sir 
Joshua?” 

“Yes. I should like your explanation if you have one, 
or your admission of my charge, and your promise that 
this—this—plague shall cease.” 

“You use strange words, sir, for a man who has no 
evidence for what he says.” 

“Yes,” ejaculated Marlowe, “yes, by Jove, you do-” 

“Please, Marlowe. You will not be content with hav¬ 
ing relieved your mind, Sir Joshua. You wish me to 
answer you?” 

“I do. I require it.” 

“You know, sir, you great doctors have one failing. 
It is one priests have, too. You cannot avoid talking 
to me as if I were your patient—a mental, a nervous 
case. You can’t help believing that your firm tone, your 
almost—may I say it—discourteous manner will im¬ 
press me. Well, it doesn’t.” 

Sir Joshua got red. Lascelles’ words too entirely 
diagnosed his method. He was annoyed that he should 
seem so transparent to a man whom he regarded as 
at least half-crazy. 

“I beg your pardon. There is something in what 
200 



THE NARROW WAY 


you say. Men in all professions have their—ah! tricks.” 

“Thank you.” 

Lascelles got up and stood by the fireplace looking 
down on his visitor. In the last month he had changed. 
He seemed bigger and more masculine—more as if he 
now had personal responsibilities; he looked less of an 
official, more of a man. He spoke rather slowly. 

“You have accused me of murder, Sir Joshua. You 
ask me to admit my crime, and to promise to cease. 
Well, I expected your visit. I have long been familiar 
with your Treatise on Renascence Toxicology; it is as 
complete as any published book. And I am glad you 
and Marlowe came to-night. I have my answer ready. 
I admit nothing, and I promise nothing.” 

Sir Joshua looked with a puzzled air at the priest. For 
a moment his accusation seemed a monstrous thing to 
himself. Then his common sense surged back. 

“Father Lascelles, your answer does not satisfy me. I 
must take other steps.” 

“They will not lead anywhere. Sir Joshua. If you 
find no evidence, no other man can. You say my poor 
people were poisoned. Well, find the poison. Ah—you 
know you cannot. It is foolish to threaten me. But I 
will tell you what I had determined to tell Marlowe to¬ 
night. First, I do not expect there will be any more 
deaths from this plague for a long time. 

“Secondly, I have a confession to make. Last All 
Hallows I was depressed. The work here has not gone 
as it should. I had the children, but not their parents. 
I thought much of Death and the Departed at that 
season of all the dead—and at last I prayed to God that 
if nothing else would move these people, He would send 
201 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


Death. Send Death mysterious and as a judgment. 
Death has come, and my people have learnt their lesson. 
All of those who died were reconciled to Holy Church 
before death. Of those who remain nearly all have 
adhered to the Church. This afternoon Mr. Trengrowse 
came and asked to be prepared for Confirmation-” 

“Trengrowse, the minister-” cried Marlowe. 

“And this evening I had notice that all who are com¬ 
petent intend to make their Communion next Sunday. 
This parish has been won for God, Sir Joshua, and at 
the cost of thirteen deaths. Isn’t it worth it?” 

“Father Lascelles, I cannot regard you as sane. You 
are not only practically admitting your crime, you are 
disclosing your motives.” 

“I beg your pardon, I admit nothing. I acknowledge I 
prayed to God to visit this people, if necessary, by His 
secret Death. That is not a crime. Next Sunday I 
shall tell my people.” 

“And have you prayed that the deaths shall cease?” 
asked Sir Joshua ironically. 

“I was doing so when you entered,” replied Lascelles 
quietly. 

“Good God, man, your hypocrisy sickens me. You 
prate of God’s intervention, and all the time you’ve been 
sending man after man to death by some foul poison 
of your own.” 

“Sir Joshua—do you believe God commonly works 
without human intervention?” 

“Bah! That is sophistry.” 

“You condemn the machinery of justice, the com¬ 
promise of war, our human evasion of rope and guil¬ 
lotine?” 


202 




THE NARROW WAY 


“Surely, Marlowe,” exclaimed Sir Joshua, “you can’t 
sit and listen quietly to this damnable nonsense?” 

Marlowe had been sitting dazed, looking at Lascelles 
as if he were fascinated. He replied in a remote voice. 

“I don’t know. I’m wondering”—he gave a nervous 
laugh—“wondering if Lascelles is a saint or a devil.” 

Lascelles went on imperturbably. 

“You don’t answer me. You can’t. Why should you 
think I, an anointed priest, am less fit to be the door¬ 
keeper of death than Lord Justice Ommaney? At least 
I use no case-law. I am the slave of no precedent. I 
know my people. I know them individually. I love them 
as persons. And as persons I judge them.” 

The tall figure of the man seemed to glow. His face 
was lit with an unnatural beauty as he stood looking 
down on the other two, and dared them to answer him. 

Sir Joshua rose. He had lost his somewhat pompous 
judicial air. He was deeply, humanly moved; and he 
spoke with an anxiety far more impressive than his 
previous authoritative tone. 

“Father Lascelles, I have nothing more to say. I be¬ 
lieve you have done a very horrible, a very wicked thing. 
I have heard how you would defend yourself if you 
were legally brought to book for such an offence. Your 
defence has, as you are aware, no legal force. I think 
it has no moral force. You are deceiving yourself 
strangely. One day you will have a great loneliness of 
heart. You will realise how terrible a responsibility 
you have taken. Without the sanction of society, with¬ 
out the approval of your church, you have decided, alone, 
the fate of your fellow-creatures. I am sorry for you. 
Good-night.” 


203 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


The light left Lascelles’ face. He looked suddenly ill 
and careworn. Then with a high, frantic gesture he 
flung his hand towards the Crucifix. 

“He, too—He, too—was made sin.” 


DAVY JONES’S GIFT 

By JOHN MASEFIELD 


“/^VNCE upon a time,” said the sailor, “the Devil 

If and Davy Jones came to Cardiff, to the place 
called Tiger Bay. They put up at Tony Adam’s, 
not far from Pier Head, at the corner of Sunday Lane. 
And all the time they stayed there, they used to be going 
to the rum-shop, where they sat at a table, smoking their 
cigars, and dicing each other for different persons’ souls. 
Now you must know that the Devil gets landsmen, and 
Davy Jones gets sailor-folk; and they get tired of having 
always the same, so then they dice each other for some 
of another sort. 

“One time they were in a place in Mary Street, hav¬ 
ing some burnt brandy, and playing red and black for 
the people passing. And while they were looking out on 
the street and turning the cards, they saw all the people 
on the sidewalk breaking their necks to get into the gut¬ 
ter. And they saw all the shop-people running out and 
kowtowing, and all the carts pulling up, and all the police 
saluting. ‘Here comes a big nob,’ said Davy Jones. ‘Yes,’ 
said the Devil; ‘it’s the Bishop that’s stopping with the 
Mayor.’ ‘Red or black?’ said Davy Jones, picking up a 
card. ‘I don’t play for bishops,’ said the Devil. ‘I re¬ 
spect the cloth,’ he said. ‘Come on, man,’ said Davy 
Jones. ‘I’d give an admiral to have a bishop. Come 
on, now; make your game. Red or black?’ ‘Well, I say 

From A Tarpaulin Muster, by John Masefield, by permission of 
Dodd, Mead and Company. 


205 



TWENTY-THREE STORIES 

red,’ said the Devil. ‘It’s the ace of clubs,’ said Davy 
Jones; 'I win; and it’s the first bishop ever I had in my 
life.’ The Devil was mighty angry at that—at losing a 
bishop. Til not play any more,’ he said; T’m off home. 
Some people gets too good cards for me. There was 
some queer shuffling when that pack was cut, that’s my 
belief.’ 

“ ‘Ah, stay and be friends, man,’ said Davy Jones. 
‘Look at what’s coming down the street. I’ll give you 
that for nothing.’ 

“Now, coming down the street there was a reefer— 
one of those apprentice fellows. And he was brass- 
bound fit to play music. He stood about six feet, and 
there were bright brass buttons down his jacket, and 
on his collar, and on his sleeves. His cap had a big 
gold badge, with a house-flag in seven different colours 
in the middle of it, and a gold chain cable of a chinstay 
twisted round it. He was wearing his cap on three 
hairs, and he was walking on both the sidewalks and 
all the road. His trousers were cut like wind-sails round 
his ankles. He had a fathom of red silk tie rolling out 
over his chest. He’d a cigarette in a twisted clay 
holder a foot and a half long. He was chewing tobacco 
over his shoulders as he walked. He’d a bottle of rum- 
hot in one hand, a bag of jam tarts in the other, and his 
pockets were full of love-letters from every port between 
Rio and Callao, round by the East. 

“‘You mean to say you’ll give me that?’ said the 
Devil. ‘I will,’ said Davy Jones, ‘and a beauty he is. 
I never see a finer.’ ‘He is, indeed, a beauty,’ said the 
Devil. ‘I take back what I said about the cards. I’m 
sorry I spoke crusty. What’s the matter with some 
206 


DAVY JONES’S GIFT 

burnt brandy?’ ‘Burnt brandy be it,’ said Davy Jones. 
So then they rang the bell, and ordered a new jug and 
clean glasses. 

“Now the Devil was so proud of what Davy Jones 
had given him, he couldn’t keep away from him. He 
used to hang about the East Bute Docks, under the red¬ 
brick clock-tower, looking at the barque the young man 
worked aboard. Bill Harker his name was. He was in 
the West Coast barque, the Coronel, loading fuel for 
Hilo. So at last, when the Coronel was sailing, the 
Devil shipped himself aboard her, as one of the crowd in 
the fo’c’sle, and away they went down the Channel. At 
first he was very happy, for Bill Harker was in the same 
watch, and the two would yarn together. And though 
he was wise when he shipped, Bill Harker taught him 
a lot. There was a lot of things Bill Harker knew 
about. But when they were off the River Plate, they got 
caught in a pampero, and it blew very hard, and a big 
green sea began to run. The Coronel was a wet ship, 
and for three days you could stand upon her poop, and 
look forward and see nothing but a smother of foam 
from the break of the poop to the jib-boom. The crew 
had to roost on the poop. The fo’c’sle was flooded out. 
So while they were like this the flying jib worked loose. 
‘The jib will be gone in a half a tick,’ said the mate. 
‘Out there, one of you, and make it fast, before it blows 
away.’ But the boom was dipping under every minute, 
and the waist was four feet deep, and green water came 
aboard all along her length. So none of the crowd would 
go forward. Then Bill Harker shambled out, and away 
he went forward, with the green seas smashing over 
him, and he lay out along the jib-boom and made the sail 
207 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


fast, and jolly nearly drowned he was. ‘That’s a brave 
lad, that Bill Harker,’ said the Devil. ‘Ah, come off,’ 
said the sailors. ‘Them reefers, they haven’t got souls 
to be saved.’ It was that that set the Devil thinking. 

“By and by they came up with the Horn; and if it had 
blown off the Plate, it now blew off the roof. Talk about 
wind and weather. They got them both for shore aboard 
the Coronet. And it blew all the sails off her, and she 
rolled all her masts out, and the seas made a breach of 
her bulwarks, and the ice knocked a hole in her bows. 
So watch and watch they pumped the old Coronet, and 
the leak gained steadily, and they were hove to under a 
weather cloth, five and a half degrees to the south of 
anything. And while they were like this, just about 
giving up hope, the old man sent the watch below, and 
told them they could start prayers. So the Devil crept 
on to the top of the half-deck, to look through the scuttle, 
to see what the reefers were doing, and what kind of 
prayers Bill Harker was putting up. And he saw them 
all sitting round the table, under the lamp, with Bill 
Harker at the head. And each of them had a hand of 
cards, and a length of knotted rope-yarn, and they were 
playing able-whackets. Each man in turn put down a 
card, and swore a new blasphemy, and if his swear didn’t 
come as he played the card, then all the others hit him 
with their teasers. But they never once had a chance to 
hit Bill Harker. ‘I think they were right about his soul,’ 
said the Devil. And he sighed, like he was sad. 

“Shortly after the Coronet went down, and all hands 
drowned in her, saving only Bill Harker and the Devil. 
They came up out of the smothering green seas, and 
saw the stars blinking in the sky, and heard the wind 
208 


DAVY JONES’S GIFT 


howling like a pack of dogs. They managed to get 
aboard the Coronel’s hen-house, which had come adrift, 
and floated. The fowls were all drowned inside, so they 
lived on drowned hens. As for drink, they had to do 
without for there was none. When they got thirsty they 
splashed their faces with salt water; but they were so 
cold they didn’t feel thirst very bad. They drifted three 
days and three nights, till their skins were all cracked 
and salt-caked. And all the Devil thought of was whether 
Bill Harker had a soul. And Bill kept telling the Devil 
what a thundering big feed they would have as soon as 
they fetched to port, and how good a rum-hot would be, 
with a lump of sugar and a bit of lemon peel. 

“And at last the old hen-house came bump on to Terra 
del Fuego, and there were some natives cooking rabbits. 
So the Devil and Bill made a raid of the whole jing bang, 
and ate till they were tired. Then they had a drink out 
of a brook, and a warm by the fire, and a pleasant sleep. 
‘Now,’ said the Devil, T will see if he’s got a soul. I’ll 
see if he give thanks.’ So after an hour or two Bill took 
a turn up and down and came to the Devil. ‘It’s mighty 
dull on this forgotten continent,’ he said. ‘Have you got 
a h’penny?’ ‘No,’ said the Devil. ‘What in joy d’ye 
want with a ha’penny?’ ‘I might have played you pitch 
and toss,’ said Bill. ‘I give you up,’ said the Devil; 
‘you’ve no more soul than the inner part of an empty 
barrel.’ And with that the Devil vanished in a flame of 
sulphur. 

“Bill stretched himself, and put another shrub on the 
fire. He picked up a few round shells, and began a 
game of knucklebones.” 


209 


THE CALL OF THE HAND 

(A Story of the Balkans') 

By LOUIS GOLDING 

I 

N O one knew what sin Nikolai Kupreloff had com¬ 
mitted to bring on his head so terrible a penalty. 
Year after year his wife and he had prayed for a 
child, to their ikons in the tiny basilica in the wood, and 
when his wife gave birth at last, it was neither a child 
nor children. She had given birth to two little boys, 
perfectly made, exquisitely proportioned, but there was 
a deadly thing had befallen them . . . the tiny right 
hand of the one was inexorably seized by the left hand 
of the other. 

The little woodcutter’s cottage of Nikolai lay deeply 
hidden in the great pine woods of Lower Serbia, miles 
from his nearest neighbour. Yet even in that wild coun¬ 
try the fame of the intertwined children travelled far, 
and the wise old women from those parts came to see if 
herbs or chanting or any of their dark gifts might be 
of the least avail. They were no more useful than a real 
doctor who had studied at Belgrade, was practising at 
Monastir, and was stimulated to great interest by the 
account of these strange children. The case defied all 
the arts of black or white magic, and the interest of the 
episode flickered and died down. 

210 


THE CALL OF THE HAND 


So it was that Nikolai reconciled himself to the in¬ 
evitable, and as the boys grew older he would cross 
himself devoutly and say: “Thank God, it might have 
been a thousand times worse!” They were lads of 
extraordinary beauty. Peter and Ivan he called them, 
Ivan being the lad who held so irrevocably the wrist of his 
brother within his fingers. In appearance they were 
identical—the light, tough hair and the laughing blue 
eyes of the Serbian Slav, sturdy, well-knit limbs, and 
a sterling robustness of physique. It was only their 
parents and themselves who knew that between them 
there was one slight but unmistakable mark of distinction 
—below the knuckle of Ivan’s thumb was marked dully 
a little red arrow. In fact, a stranger might not have 
known that this abnormal bond existed between the two 
brothers as he saw them swinging along under the pines. 
“What a loving little pair!” he would exclaim, as he 
heard them laugh and chatter in complete harmony, and 
look into each other’s eyes with the understanding born 
of flawless love. 

When they were about fifteen years old their mother 
died, and the father Nikolai began more and more to 
remain behind in his cottage attending to the frugal 
needs of the little family, while Peter and Ivan, as the 
years went on, grew even more skilful in the art of 
woodcutting; for Peter wielding the axe in his left hand, 
Ivan in his right, achieved such a fine reciprocity of 
movement, that Nikolai would laugh in his great yellow 
beard and mutter: “Truly the ways of God are in¬ 
scrutable, for even out of their calamity has He made 
a great blessing!” The passing of time only knit closer 
their perfect intimacy, so that they almost did not notice 
211 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


when their father Nikolai sickened and died. Now they 
were left to their cottage and their woodcutting and their 
complete love, the whole being crowned by the splendid 
physique of young foresters at twenty-one; so that life, 
it seemed, had nothing in store for them but long years 
of undivided love and content. 

Yet even into their seclusion rumours came of the great 
world beyond. Now and again they would catch glimpses 
of the marvels of Salonika in the eyes of travelled men. 
They would hear of a city where lovely women, infinitely 
more beautiful than the queen of the tousled gypsies who 
flickered from time to time along the forest paths, sang 
upon stages of golden wood, in gardens full of hanging 
lights. They would hear of the sea and glowing ships, 
and men who spoke low musical languages uttered in 
countries beyond the sea. 

So it was the brothers determined to leave their wood¬ 
cutting behind them for a season and adventure forth 
into the world of ships and songs and lovely women. 

i 

2 

To Peter and Ivan Salonika was a revelation of won¬ 
ders they barely thought actual. From a little room in 
the street of Johann Tschimiski they saw the multi¬ 
coloured tides of cosmopolitan humanity sweeping down 
from Egnatia Street, down Venizelos Street to the Place 
de la Concorde. They would walk along the quay-side 
past the great hotels to the Jardins de la Tour Blanche, 
and were sent into an ecstasy of delight by the chic 
little women who smiled archly at these two fair-headed 
lads from the up-country, who walked along hand clasped 
212 


THE CALL OF THE HAND 


in wrist in so naive and rustic a manner. Yet when they 
entered the Theatre des Varietes at the White Tower it 
seemed to them that the very portals of heaven had 
opened wide. They would return in a daze of delight to 
their room and recount with an almost religious fervour 
the beauties and enchantments of the show. Each little 
Spanish or French girl who came to do her song or 
minuet had seemed to them more enchanting than the 
last. Never a cloud of disagreement came between them. 
There was a perfect coincidence in their tastes, and 
never, they felt, had their love for each other been so 
sympathetic and complete as it was now. 

The brothers had no large sum of money at their dis¬ 
posal. The time of their holiday was drawing to a 
close. One evening they turned up at the theatre for 
the last time, their nerves keyed up to a pitch of de¬ 
lighted impatience, the more tense as the brothers knew 
that the next day would see them on the arduous road 
back to their Serbian forest. Turn followed turn with 
alluring consequence. Then at one stage the music 
ceased for some moments and there was an atmosphere 
of expectance in the air. It was then that a simple and 
delightful English girl came half-shyly from the wings. 
There was nothing flamboyant in her appearance or her 
manner. Yet at once she seemed to seize the house with 
the graceful and reticent winsomeness of her song. So 
she sang her song through, a dainty little ballad of old- 
world gardens and fragrant flowers and love unto death. 
Peter felt the fingers of Ivan tighten round his wrist. 
He himself had been so stirred to his depths by the 
gentle grace of the girl that it was with a slight feeling 
of resentment he realised that Ivan had been experiencing 
213 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


once again an identical emotion. As he involuntarily 
moved away his arm Ivan uttered a slight cry of im¬ 
patience. He turned round and looked into Peter’s eyes 
and found them aflame with a light deeper than mere 
appreciation. Peter was aware of his brother’s glance 
and looked at Ivan in return to find his face flushed almost 
as if he were half-drunk. 

That night for the first time in their history there 
occurred a slight bickering between the two. No mention 
of the little English actress passed between them, but 
each of them determined that some day, when his broth¬ 
er’s interest had died away, he should broach the subject 
and the possibility of a rediscovery of the English actress 
at Salonika. 

Next day they entrained for Monastir, and a few days 
later saw them installed once again in their father’s 
cottage in the wood. 


3 

In proportion as the fortunes of the Kupreloff brothers 
increased, something that had once existed between them 
receded further away. The perfection of their old in¬ 
timacy became a memory of the past. No longer did 
the most minute physical or spiritual experience of the 
one become automatically part of his brother’s conscious¬ 
ness. So that now for the first time their indissoluble 
partnership became more and more galling. 

There was no doubt of it. Everything dated from that 
last night at Salonika, when the English girl appeared 
on the stage. They would still occasionally revive some¬ 
thing of the old fervour as they discussed from time to 
214 


THE CALL OF THE HAND 

time their impressions of the unforgettable holiday. Yet 
never a word passed between them concerning the un¬ 
conscious girl who had captured both their hearts. At 
night they would lie awake, each thinking that the other 
was asleep. Bitterly, definitely, they would confess to 
their own deep hearts: “She is mine, she is mine; I am 
hers for ever.” And yet to each their love seemed hope¬ 
less beyond recall. There was the double sting that each 
of them loved the girl with an intensity reserved hitherto 
for his brother; but, if possible, more fatal was the 
despairing conviction that no girl could ever love the one 
of two brothers to whom the other would remain phys¬ 
ically attached till death carried them both away. As the 
months passed by the friction between them increased. 
They were now in a position to buy land and a little live¬ 
stock. But if Peter insisted upon keeping pigs, in the 
fashion of the majority of Serbians, Ivan would insist 
upon cattle. If Peter felt that he had done enough wood¬ 
cutting for the day, Ivan felt that the day was only just 
beginning. 

One night in late autumn Peter lay tossing very heavily 
in his sleep. Ivan lay awake, thinking, thinking for ever 
of the girl, his whole heart full of rancour against the 
brother who must for ever prevent the consummation of 
his love. Heavily, wearily, Peter heaved on the bed. 
Outside the wind was howling. The dreariness of the 
wind seemed to enter Peter’s heart. “My little girl,” he 
murmured, “my little girl! When shall we meet, my 
little girl? Never, never, never!” Ivan’s forehead con¬ 
tracted with hate. He was filled suddenly with a tre¬ 
mendous loathing of his brother. “Never, never, never!” 
moaned Peter. Suddenly, obeying a frantic impulse, Ivan 
215 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


pulled with all his strength away from his brother’s 
wrist to which Fate had so viciously fastened him. With 
a great scream of pain Peter half leapt from the bed. 

“What’s this? What do you mean?” he shouted, his 
voice thick with pain and sleep. “Nothing! Nothing! 
I couldn’t help it! I was dreaming!” replied Ivan sav¬ 
agely, and the brothers settled down again for the night. 

Night after night the same thing happened. Peter 
would murmur for ever in his sleep, “My little girl, 
when shall we meet? Never, never, never!” Ivan would 
lie awake, hatred surging violently through his whole 
body, till his eyes would see nothing but flames in the 
darkness of their log-built room; and the sound of the 
branches in the forest would begin to mutter and moan: 
“Have done with it, Ivan, have done with it! She is 
waiting for you, waiting, always waiting. Have done 
with it! Have done with him —with him —with him! ,} 

One desolate night towards mid-winter the room was 
full of the miserable sleep-cries of Peter. Outside thun¬ 
der ripped among the clouds. A finger of lightning 
came suddenly through the windows and pointed with a 
gesture of flame towards the open breast of Peter. A 
sudden and terrible thought flooded into Ivan’s soul! 
Whatever there was of human kindness and brother-love 
seemed in one sinister moment to be washed away from 
before the onset of the flood. All the branches upon all 
the trees shrieked across the night. “We shall be quiet, 
you shall have rest. She shall be yours. Have done 
with him, have done with him!” 

A great calm settled down upon Ivan’s soul—the issue 
was decided, the issue which had been hovering for so 
long in his subconsciousness was decided at last. There 
216 


THE CALL OF THE HAND 


was nothing left to do. The mere deed was the mere 
snapping of a thread. With his eyes wide open, a ter¬ 
rible silence laying upon his soul, he stared into the 
night, waiting, waiting for the dawn. 

Dawn came at last. The brothers washed and took 
food. There was a long way to go, far off into the woods. 
There was almost a tenderness in Ivan’s attitude towards 
Peter. What mattered now? The issue was decided; 
the gods had taken the thing out of his hands. With their 
axes swinging they made their way into the woods, 
through a day sharp with frost. At last they arrived at 
the clearing where they were to continue their tree-felling. 
A brazier stood waiting there, and before work started 
they lit a fire in preparation for the midday meal. Then 
they picked up their axes and set to. Lustily their strokes 
rang through the wood. Chime rang upon chime. It 
was strenuous work, the work of men with strong muscles 
and keen eyes. 

The morning went by steadily. There was no hate 
in Ivan’s soul—only a deadly patience. He knew the 
moment would come. He knew when the moment came 
that he would act. For a few minutes they stopped and 
wiped their foreheads. Peter opened his shirt wide and 
exposed his breast to Ivan. The quick vision presented 
itself of Peter heaving darkly in their bed, the sudden 
finger of lightning, the naked breast. 

“Come!” said Ivan thickly, “let us begin!” 

They both took up their positions against a tree. Peter 
with the axe in his left hand struck against the tree. Ivan, 
quick as the lightning which last night had shown him his 
way, whirled his axe round, away from the tree, and the 
sharp edge went cracking through Peter’s ribs, deep be- 
217 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


yond the heart. A great fountain of blood spurted into 
the air. A long, feeble moan left Peter’s lips. Deeper 
than the axe had cut, his eyes looked sorrowfully into 
the soul of Ivan. His weight tottered and Ivan felt him¬ 
self following to the ground. There was not a moment 
to lose. Again the axe whirled through the air. With 
the whole of a strong man’s strength the axe came 
down upon his own wrist, and down fell the body of 
Peter with the hand of his brother indissoluble in death 
round his wrist, as it had been indissoluble in life. 

The thing he had brought about was too monstrous for 
Ivan at that moment to understand. It was only the 
little things that his ear and eye seized—the frightened 
screech of a bird in a tree, the sullen shining of the little 
red arrow in the thumb of his own severed hand. 

Ivan felt the blood streaming from the stump of his 
forearm. He knew that if he did not reassert complete 
mastery over himself he would bleed to death. All would 
be vain—the call of the far girl, the murder, the last look 
in Peter’s eyes. He staggered over to the brazier and 
plunged his forearm for one swift instant into the em¬ 
bers. Then darkness overwhelmed him and he fell back¬ 
ward into unutterable night. 


4 

It was easy enough to explain. Not the least suspicion 
attached itself to Ivan. People came from remote cabins 
and farms to sympathise with the bereaved brother. 
What was more likely in the world than that Ivan’s axe 
should slide from a knot in the tree and come crashing 
against Peter, who, even if he could see the axe coming, 
218 


THE CALL OF THE HAND 

could not by any human means have disengaged himself 
from his brother. “I always thought something like this 
would happen,” people muttered wisely to each other, 
and shook their heads and crossed their breasts. 

Of course they all understood how Ivan could no 
longer remain in the cottage consecrated by memories of 
his brother. So Ivan sold his accumulation of timber 
and his land and what little stock the brothers had bought, 
and it was not many weeks after his forearm was healed 
that the jangling train from Monastir was bearing him 
through the Macedonian hills upon his quest for the 
English girl at Salonika. 

In Salonika she was nowhere to be found. Forlornly 
he went from music-hall to music-hall, but she was gone. 
He haunted even the cafes chantants along Egnatia 
Street, even the degenerate brasseries on the Monastir 
Road, where the red-costumed women stood upon im¬ 
provised platforms and sang to tipsy crowds with the 
accompaniment of feeble violins. But there was no trace 
of her in the whole city. From the director at the White 
Tower he learned that perhaps she had proceeded to Con¬ 
stantinople, perhaps she had returned to Athens, whence 
the European artistes generally came to Salonika on their 
round of the greater Levantine towns. 

With all the fervour and idealism of a mediaeval knight 
Ivan stepped upon the deck of a Messageries Maritimes 
boat returning to Marseilles by way of the Piraeus. When 
the electric train from the harbour landed him at the 
station in Athens a mystic conviction filled him that here 
in this city, some day, the English girl would be re¬ 
vealed to him. Ambitiously he first tried the great 
Opera, but she was not there. The weeks lengthened 
219 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


into months and failure followed failure, but the mys¬ 
terious foreknowledge of his race held up his weary 
spirits and bade him put aside despair. 

When at last she appeared upon the stage of one of 
the lesser music-halls, it was with no great start of 
surprise or welcome that he recognised her arrival. It 
was as if a mother or a sister had slipped back into the 
place from which for some reason she had been absent. 
Her features had become engraved upon every curve of 
his brain. She came upon the stage and filled his life 
again as naturally as day fills the place of night. Life 
became for him a thing of meaning and splendour. He 
realised that at last Life was to begin. 

He knew little of the half-measures and half-advances 
of Western civilisation. He lost no time in appearing 
before the girl. After only a few words of difficult 
apology, with a voice of low and subdued passion he 
told her a fragment or two of his tale. It was a broken 
French that he talked—the French of which his mother 
long ago had taught her boys the few phrases she knew, 
and which his experiences in Salonika and Athens during 
the last few months had greatly improved. 

The large grey eyes of the English girl opened wide 
in wonder as she listened, fascinated, to the stammering 
avowals of this tall stranger from a shadowy land. Half 
in fright she drew back against the wall of her wretched 
little dressing-room, but, even so soon she realised that 
the destiny was overwhelming her which was to bring an 
end to her wanderings. She consented shyly to his sug¬ 
gestion that she should see him for a little while next 
night, and it was with a thrill of delight and fear she 
saw his great figure waiting for her at the gate of the 
220 


THE CALL OF THE HAND 


Museum, as the purple Athenian dusk came wandering 
down from the Acropolis and cast velvet glooms among 
the pillars of Pentelican marble. 

For years since her mother had died and her father 
had become a confirmed drunkard, it was a very lonely 
life that Mary Weston had led. She had no great talent, 
and she had drifted from theatre to theatre upon the 
Continent, for to her England was a place of no kindly 
memories. Ivan Kupreloff began to mean for her what 
her mother had meant before she died and her father 
before he had taken to drink. 

A few months had passed only. There was no escape 
from Ivan. There was nothing importunate about him, 
but he was irresistible. He was Life. Proudly he 
realised that he had conquered her. To world’s end and 
Time’s end she was his own. 

They were married at length. Athens and all the cities 
she had known, the Serbian wood and the murdered 
brother—these passed utterly from their souls in the 
strong kiss which united them for all days. 

5 

Yet not for ever was the memory of his dead life to 
vanish from the heart of Ivan. Even during the times 
of his most passionate love for Mary there began to 
invade him moments of bitter memory and regret. There 
was something which prevented the entire fusion with 
Mary towards which he yearned and ached. It was some¬ 
thing deep in his soul. It was something which gnawed 
at his forearm, bit with teeth of contrition at the place 
where the axe had fallen and severed the hand from the 
wrist. 


221 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 

He tried to put all this futility from him. He would 
seize Mary more closely, look desperately into her eyes, 
and in the perfume of her lips and hair seek anodyne. 
Between them there was a sufficient store of money, small 
though it was, to allow them a few months of liberty, 
undisturbed by any thought of the future. They wan¬ 
dered lazily about Greece for a little time, finding in the 
Greek day and the immemorial hills a perfect setting for 
their love. 

And yet ever more insistently came to him the call of 
the hand—the hand which had been his own and not his 
own, the hand which had united in so unique an embrace 
his brother with himself. 

Again at night voices tormented him. Again, when 
winds were about, they called with living words: “The 
hand! The hand! It is calling you, calling! Answer! 
He wants you! Peter!” wailed the wind. “Peter! 
Peter!” 

Lines began to draw across his forehead. With 
anxiety Mary saw shadows growing under his eyes, and 
in his eyes a hunger which grew more and more forlorn. 
“What is it, love?” she would murmur. “You’ve not 
slept well!” 

“Nothing at all, love, nothing! All’s well!” he would 
reply, trying with a kiss to forget the wind and the hand 
and the call. 

“There’s something you’re longing for. Tell me, 
Ivan. Let me help you. You must.” 

“Nothing, Mary. I’ve got you. There’s nothing else 
in the world.” But the call of the hand did not abate. 
“Peter!” the winds wailed, “Peter! He wants you! 
Answer!” 


222 


THE CALL OF THE HAND 

The urgency of the call grew more imperious. He 
was sickening and growing weak. There was a hot tor¬ 
pidity in the dry Greek noon which shrivelled his veins. 
He would drag his coat down from his neck and lift 
his head and try to breathe the deep breath he had 
known in his Serbian wood. But there was no spacious¬ 
ness, no great draughts of cool air in the wind, only 
voices: “Peter! Peter! Peter!” 

“We must go somewhere. We must go away,” said 
Mary. “We must go to Athens and see a doctor, Ivan. 
I’m afraid!” 

“Not Athens! No!” he replied with a shudder, his 
temples contracting as before the hot blast from an oven. 
Those dry marble spaces! The dusty pepper-trees! The 
sweating crowds in the shops, swallowing sweet cakes 
like swine swallowing husks in a sty! Athens became a 
nightmare. 

He was lying awake one night, the body of Mary curled 
beside him, her hair floating vaguely on the pillow in 
the half-light of the moon. She stirred in her sleep, and 
her little white hand unconsciously sought his wrist and 
fastened tightly round it. That moment bridged the 
buried time. Unescapably Mary had brought back to 
him the sensation of Peter lying in the grasp of his own 
hand. Never before was the call of the hand so im¬ 
perious. Never so clearly did the wind exclaim, “Peter! 
He wants you! Answer!” 

An irresistible love for his murdered brother over¬ 
whelmed him. He raised himself from his bed and lifted 
helplessly his lopped arm into the whispering room. 
“Coming, my brother, I am coming! Wait! Peter!” 
he moaned, and the wind replied: “Peter! Peter!” 

223 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


He lay back in bed. He realised that the strongest 
claim in the world upon him was the call of the hand. 
As for Mary—she was nothing different from himself. 
For her as for him the call of the hand came dictatori- 
ally. In each other they were one, but without the hand 
their unity was uncompleted. The call of the hand must 
be obeyed. To-morrow they must leave Greece behind. 
To-morrow to Serbia, to-morrow the response to the 
hand. 

Mary was not surprised when Ivan without warning 
explained that all their plans were altered. She was used 
to his unaccountable whims, the sudden mystic impulses 
of his Slavonic soul. 

They packed up the few things which were all the im¬ 
pediment they possessed, and next day saw them well 
started on their w,ay to Monastir, carefully skirting 
Athens. Arrived at Monastir, a few days elapsed before 
they appeared at the remote wood where Ivan was born. 
The cottage built by Ivan Kupreloff was not yet occupied. 
The strange character of its former inhabitants combined 
with the terrible nature of Peter’s death had succeeded 
in keeping it empty! They obtained permission from its 
owner to occupy the cottage, and with a great sigh of 
content Ivan flung open the door where he and his brother 
had passed so frequently in former days. 

In a little time Mary had made of the house such a 
palace of delight as it had not been since Ivan’s mother 
was dead. Happily, Ivan took in large draughts of the 
Serbian pineland air, filling his lungs. Happily, with 
Mary beside him on the bed where he and Peter had 
lain entwined, the dark drowsy nights melted into dawn. 

224 


THE CALL OF THE HAND 

He made his reply to the call of the hand. Only faintly, 
if at all, the wind or the branches whispered “Peter! 
Peter!” Peter seemed to be happy at last. The severed 
hand seemed at last to be tranquil round the wrist of 
the murdered brother. Then the winds died away, and 
there was no sound of “Peter!”; only fitfully a swaying 
of twigs and a rustle of pine-needles. 

So it seemed. Till summer drooped her drowsing hair. 
Summer became wrinkled and old. Summer went and 
the swift autumn came. The days shortened into the 
rigours of winter, the days ever contracted towards the 
anniversary of that red day when the axe was lifted and 
Peter fell. Never a moment did it occur to Ivan that now 
when the fatal day was approaching he might leave behind 
him his Serbian wood. He knew that, more tightly than 
ever during his living days, the wrist of Peter lay within 
his own hand, tight, unescapable. Mary and he lay under 
the thumb of that severed hand wherefrom the red 
arrow glowed when the night was dark and the wood- 
fire threw leaping shadows over the log-walls. There was 
no gainsaying the call of the hand till the end of days. 
Ivan knew that never again would he leave behind his 
Serbian wood. 

Came the night which was the anniversary of that 
dead, unburyable night when Peter’s doom had been 
sealed. Again there was the rumbling of thunder, there 
were evil flashes of lightning that ran among the clouds. 
Never with so firm an embrace had Mary been clasped 
within his arms. Nothing in the world was so strong as 
his love for Mary. They had responded to the call of 
the hand. There was no further claim upon them. Ivan 
kissed her sleeping eyes and was lulled in the music of 
225 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


her breathing. A drowsiness came over him, and for a 
time he slid into sleep. 

In his sleep something tightened round him, some¬ 
thing growing so tight that it forced through the bar¬ 
riers of his sleep. Vaguely, faintly a half-consciousness 
came back to him. He was not awake. He was not 
asleep. He was in a borderland where the other world 
is not dead and this world is half-alive. Tighter grew 
the thing which pressed against his sleep. It was round 
his wrist, it was round the wrist where something had 
once come crashing down. What was it? What was it 
had come crashing down? An axe it was that had come 
crashing down. It was the hand of Mary growing 
tighter round his wrist. No, it could not be the hand 
of Mary. Mary had fallen from his arms. Mary was 
turned away from him. He could see her hands pale 
where she had lifted them in sleep above her head. It 
was not the hand of Mary growing tighter round his 
wrist. But it was a hand. No doubt of that. It was 
a hand. With a dull glow of flame a little red arrow 
gleamed like embers below the thumb of the hand. 
Where had he seen that arrow? Where and when? 
When his hand had fallen away from him, lopped at the 
wrist. It was the dead hand which was not dead. It 
was his own hand. It was the hand with the red 
arrow which had held Peter so tightly. It was the dead 
hand which was alive, the living hand which had arisen 
from the dead. Tighter round his wrist grew the pres¬ 
sure of the severed hand. The hand was tired of calling. 
The hand had come. There was no gainsaying the hand. 
So tight grew the clutch of the hand that his whole arm 
slowly lifted from his side. Irresistibly the shoulder 
226 


THE CALL OF THE HAND 


followed the rising arm. There was no gainsaying the 
hand. Neither awake nor asleep, neither living nor dead, 
he followed the hand, he rose from the bed where Mary 
lay, sleeping sundered from him, his no more. Mary 
was alive. He was neither living nor dead. The door of 
the room was opened wide. Closed doors were no bar¬ 
rier against the hand which had arisen from the grave. 
Slowly, with steady feet, with wide, filmy eyes, Ivan 
passed through the door. Slowly through the outer door, 
slowly into the sound of thunder, into the gleam of 
lightning and the voices of winds moaning unceasingly, 
“Peter! Peter! He is calling you! Ivan! Peter is call¬ 
ing you! Follow!” and ever again unceasingly, “Peter! 
Peter!” 

Tighter than the bonds of ice or granite hills, tight 
only as the bond of death, the arisen hand held the 
lopped wrist, drew the slow body of Ivan through the 
haunted night far into the wood, far through the talking 
trees, far to the place of that tree which had not been 
cut down, to the place where an axe had fallen through 
bones and flesh, where Peter had fallen, where Peter lay 
buried, not deep down; where Peter lay buried under 
twigs and loose earth. 

Tightly round the wrist of the man neither alive nor 
dead clutched the resurrected hand. Nearer and nearer 
to the shallow grave the hand pulled down the body of 
Ivan. Methodically, steadily, working with no pause, the 
free hand of Ivan moved the twigs and the loose earth— 
methodically, with no pause, until at last the body of 
Peter lay revealed; not recognisable, dissolute beneath 
the change through which all men shall pass, recognisable 
only to those filmy eyes of Ivan, to that questing hungry 
227 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


soul of Ivan which had come to claim its own. Closer 
and closer to the dead brother the severed hand drew the 
body of Ivan down; so close, so close, until at last the 
hand clutched again and for ever that wrist to which 
Fate had fastened it long years ago. Alongside of his 
dead brother, quietly, with those eyes which neither saw 
nor did not see, Ivan lay down full length. Gradually 
the severed hand, the hand which had arisen from the 
dead to claim him, because the dead brother called and 
the severed hand called for its own, gradually the hand 
slipped from the lopped wrist; the wrist and the arm 
became one. The hand of Ivan had brought Ivan to his 
own. Indissolubly, Peter and Ivan lay joined together. 
But the death which lay cold in the heart and body of 
Peter passed from the clutched wrist, passed into the 
hand which clutched it, passed along the arm which had 
been severed once, and along Ivan’s shoulder, until it 
made his eyes unseeing discs and of his heart cold stone 
which could beat no more. 

As the grey light of dawn came emptily down the 
Serbian woods, the two brothers lay immortally one 
again, like the two babies the gods had given Nikolai 
Kupreloff upon a long-vanished night. 


THE SENTIMENTAL MORTGAGE 

By ARTHUR LYNCH 

CAN account for the man,” said Carstairs, “but 
what I am curious about is the feelings of the girl. 
He blew out his brains in her presence, and he did 
it immediately after she had told him to be gone. 
Dramatic of him. He did it for love of her—a warm 
passion. I suppose that that would be the deepest idea 
in her mind.” 

“He was a man of his word, at any rate,” said Miss 
Landells, “for of all the heroes who are eternally swear¬ 
ing they could die for a smile and all the rest of it, 
hardly one would wet his boots unless he thought he 
could gain something by it. ... I dare say she had 
begun by despising him, and when he blew out his brains 
felt some respect for him. Probably if he were alive 
again, though, she would act in the same way.” 

“I think I could put a harder case,” said the Colonel, 
“one where a man sacrificed more-” 

“Sacrificed more?” 

“Yes; a man might easily blow out his brains in a 
burst of rage or disappointment, but that proves little. 
Blantyre, the man of whom I was thinking, did more, 
and the girl—Miss Trafford—had therefore to deal with 
a more complex problem.” 

With a warning that we might think the story grue¬ 
some, the Colonel told it. 


229 



TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


To understand the circumstances it is necessary to 
know something of Blantyre’s character. When I knew 
him first he had the rank of Captain. I being second 
lieutenant and our relations not being very familiar, I 
only knew him from what might be called an outsider’s 
point of view. I hardly think, however, that anyone knew 
him much better. That will give you a hint—he was a 
reserved man. Yet he had a fund of high-spirits; also 
a witty manner, which was at times playful and yet 
sometimes bitter. 

He was an unusually handsome man. Above average 
height, slender but well-made and active, he had regular 
features, dark complexion and black, blue-black hair. It 
was said that he had a dash of the “tar-brush”—Indian, 
you know—and this fact, trivial as it may appear, had, 
I believe, a powerful influence on his life. I know as a 
fact, that he became more reserved after a rather un¬ 
pleasant occurrence, when an ill-bred young spark, los¬ 
ing his temper in an argument, called him a Dago. 

Blantyre was always a serious sort of chap. He wrote 
for the United Service Review and the Engineering Mag¬ 
azine, and other technical journals, partly of course for 
the interest he took in that sort of thing, but also because 
he was not well-off. That too was his reason for taking 
as little part as possible in dances, picnics and the other 
little flutters by which we amused ourselves. He seemed, 
in fact, rather a fish out of water, and I used to wonder 
why he remained in the Service; but he was not only of an 
energetic and resolute habit of mind, but also intensely 
ambitious. 

He had the misfortune to fall in love with the prettiest, 
the most spoilt and, I believe, the most selfish, minx in 
230 


THE SENTIMENTAL MORTGAGE 

England. The word “brilliancy” was always on her 
lips, and she thought of nothing but pleasure and excite¬ 
ment. She was then about twenty. 

Imagine her reception of him when, carried off his feet, 
he proposed to her. She laughed in his face and, I am 
told, asked him if he were “an Indian Nabob”! 

She probably only meant that the man who married 
her must be able to give her the sort of life to which 
she was accustomed; and had not realized—she took it 
all so lightly and really cared for Blantyre so little—what 
the phrase might mean to him. His poverty and his sup¬ 
posed origin—no words could have cut more deeply. 

That very night, he set the wheels in motion and 
shortly after was transferred to the Indian battalion. 
For the next seven years he put in as much fighting on 
the frontiers as was humanly possible. He seemed the 
veriest glutton for danger, never spared himself, and 
yet people said he fought without enthusiasm or any 
warmth of blood. Oh, I grant you a queer chap! 

At first his men rather disliked him, but in time they 
became impressed by his courage and dash, and they soon 
grew to rely on his steady, his inexorable justice. He 
was never a popular man, too stiff and too reserved, but 
his men would have followed him to certain death. They 
called him “The Sabre Prince.” 

After seven years Blantyre was back amongst us, but 
by that time he had risen to be Colonel, and his reputa¬ 
tion was unique. He was then about thirty-five, still, 
you see, a young man, and quite naturally London went 
mad over him. He became the lion that particular season. 

But India had left her marks on him. He had re¬ 
turned minus his right arm, and the once blue-black 

231 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


hair was grey. However, he was still as handsome as 
ever and had the air of a man who has seen and dealt 
with matters of importance. In other words he was 
distingue. Also he was still in love with Miss Trafford. 

Nor had time and experience and that unique reputa¬ 
tion of his failed of their effect on her. As often happens 
to a woman of her type she had failed to bring off a 
match commensurate with her ambitions, and at twenty- 
seven was still unmarried. 

The news of their engagement set everybody gossip¬ 
ping. His infatuation was recalled, and it was said she 
had refused a great alliance in order to wait for him. 
The story even got into the newspapers. 

I was not a little pleased, I can tell you, to hear that 
they were to be married. She was still wonderfully 
pretty and, rumour said, less vain and spoilt. It might be 
that she would settle down and make him a good wife. 
Anyway he wanted her, he had wanted her for a long 
time, and he was going to get what he wanted. Blantyre 
himself wrote to tell me, and I think the next few weeks 
were the happiest of his life. 

Judge then, of my surprise—sorrow, too—to learn one 
day, and again from Blantyre himself that the marriage 
was off, that he had resigned his commission and got an 
engineering job abroad. 

Of course I hurried to see him. He was much as 
usual, cool, collected, finely-tempered. In fact when I 
entered he looked up with a smile—and I had always 
thought his smile lighting up that austere face peculiarly 
winning. 

It appeared that it was he who had broken off their en¬ 
gagement, and the matter can be put in a nutshell— 
232 


THE SENTIMENTAL MORTGAGE 


he had found her out. Mercenary motives, no real affec¬ 
tion—also, while he himself had grown and developed, 
she had remained the social butterfly. 

He told me—what I had not known—the story of his 
rejection seven years previously. He had believed he 
was not worthy of her, and he had gone to India to 
fight his way up to her standard. When he came back 
he had believed her story, believed she had waited. . . . 

Then he had heard things. People talk, you know. 
I don’t know that he believed what he was told, but 
what wrung him to the very vitals was that he should 
have loved so deeply something that was—well, a poor 
thing, unworthy. 

Miss Trafford was in no temper to be jilted. She even 
went the length of putting the case into her lawyer’s 
hands for breach of promise. 

“Before I leave England,” he said, “I mean as far 
as I can to satisfy justice. The law, I suppose, could 
not get more from me than I possess, and everything I 
have, I mean to give her. It was she who sent me to 
India, and I will strip myself for her of everything I 
I gained there. Will you take my medals?” and he of¬ 
fered me a little mahogany, gold-ornamented box. 
“Keep them as a memento. I do not want them. I—I 
feel I may have won them fighting against my own 
people.” 

In his words was a something of grief and even 
shame. I felt I was looking at a man who regretted what 
could not be helped, who would regret it for the remainder 
of his days. 

“There is only now my property in Devonshire. That 
233 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


I have made over to Miss Trafford. The deeds are in 
this box. The property is a small one but it has now no 
encumbrances. I have been able to clear off everything; 
except—” he said musingly—“except something she may 
or may not regard as a detriment—it is a sort of Senti¬ 
mental Mortgage.” 

“A skeleton in the cupboard?” said I, thinking of some 
ghost story, or creepy legend, or the like. 

“Precisely. You have hit it. A skeleton in the cup¬ 
board.” 

“But, but,” said I, trying to bring him back to the 
business side of the matter, “this is not justice, justice 
to yourself.” 

“When all is said and done,” he returned quietly, “you 
will recognise that justice—inexorable justice. Money, 
position, even reputation are nothing to me now. . . . 
No, I am not going to kill myself. I have accepted a 
post in an enterprise which, if successful, will make a 
more enduring mark, bring me greater wealth, perhaps 
even fame, than those frontier exploits of mine.” 

I was relieved to hear of his fresh interests. 

“I am undertaking the survey of a line to open up the 
hinterlands of Argentine. If that be successful, I shall 
hope to superintend the work. If I do not succeed— 
well, at any rate I shall have made a beginning, and my 
successor may find encouragement in the spirit in which 
I have led the way. But I am dreaming ... I wish you 
to take this box containing the deeds, and present it to 
her—if you will do me that last favour.” 

I promised. 

I brought the box to her and presented it with cere- 
234 


THE SENTIMENTAL MORTGAGE 


mony. She was always charming. She begged me to 
wait while she opened it. 

When I spoke of the “skeleton in the cupboard” I 
had little guessed how startlingly true the words must 
have sounded. It was her fault that Blantyre had gone 
to India, and with the gift lay the rebuke, for the skele¬ 
ton grasped the deeds. 

“The skeleton, Colonel?” 

“Yes, the skeleton of his right hand.” 


CAPTAIN SHARKEY: 

HOW THE GOVERNOR OF SAINT 
KITT S CAME HOME 

By A. CONAN DOYLE 

W HEN the great wars of the Spanish Succession 
had been brought to an end by the Treaty of 
Utrecht, the vast number of privateers which 
had been fitted out by the contending parties found 
their occupation gone. Some took to the more peaceful 
but less lucrative ways of ordinary commerce, others 
were absorbed into the fishing-fleets, and a few of the 
more reckless hoisted the Jolly Rodger at the mizzen and 
the bloody flag at the main, declaring a private war upon 
their own account against the whole human race. 

With mixed crews, recruited from every nation, they 
scoured the seas, disappearing occasionally to careen in 
some lonely inlet, or putting in for a debauch at some 
outlying port, where they dazzled the inhabitants by their 
lavishness and horrified them by their brutalities. 

On the Coromandel Coast, at Madagascar, in the 
African waters, and above all in the West Indian and 
American seas, the pirates were a constant menace. With 
an insolent luxury they would regulate their depreda¬ 
tions by the comfort of the seasons, harrying New Eng¬ 
land in the summer and dropping south again to the 
tropical islands in the winter. 

They were the more to be dreaded because they had 
236 


CAPTAIN SHARKEY 

none of that discipline and restraint which made their 
predecessors, the Buccaneers, both formidable and re¬ 
spectable. These Ishmaels of the sea rendered an account 
to no man, and treated their prisoners according to the 
drunken whim of the moment. Flashes of grotesque gen¬ 
erosity alternated with longer stretches of inconceivable 
ferocity, and the skipper who fell into their hands might 
find himself dismissed with his cargo, after serving as 
boon companion in some hideous debauch, or might sit 
at his cabin table with his own nose and his lips served 
up with pepper and salt in front of him. It took a stout 
seaman in those days to ply his calling in the Caribbean 
Gulf. 

Such a man was Captain John Scarrow, of the ship 
Morning Star , and yet he breathed a long sigh of relief 
when he heard the splash of the falling anchor and swung 
at his moorings within a hundred yards of the guns of 
the citadel of Basseterre. St. Kitt’s was his final port 
of call, and early next morning his bowsprit would be 
pointed for Old England. He had had enough of those 
robber-haunted seas. Ever since he had left Maracaibo 
upon the Main, with his full lading of sugar and red 
pepper, he had winced at every topsail which glimmered 
over the violet edge of the tropical sea. He had coasted 
up the Windward Islands, touching here and there, and 
assailed continually by stories of villainy and outrage. 

Captain Sharkey, of the 20-gun pirate barque Happy 
Delivery, had passed down the coast, and had littered it 
with gutted vessels and with murdered men. Dreadful 
anecdotes were current of his grim pleasantries and of 
his inflexible ferocity. From the Bahamas to the Main 
his coal-black barque, with the ambiguous name, had 
237 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


been freighted with death and many things which are 
worse than death. So nervous was Captain Scarrow, 
with his new full-rigged ship and her full and valuable 
lading, that he struck out to the west as far as Bird’s 
Island to be out of the usual track of commerce. And 
yet even in those solitary waters he had been unable to 
shake off sinister traces of Captain Sharkey. 

One morning they had raised a single skiff adrift upon 
the face of the ocean. Its only occupant was a delirious 
seaman, who yelled hoarsely as they hoisted him aboard, 
and showed a dried-up tongue like a black and wrinkled 
fungus at the back of his mouth. Water and nursing 
soon transformed him into the strongest and smartest 
sailor on the ship. He was from Marblehead, in New 
England, it seemed, and was the sole survivor of a 
schooner which had been scuttled by the dreadful Sharkey. 

For a week Hiram Evanson, for that was his name, 
had been adrift beneath a tropical sun. Sharkey had 
ordered the mangled remains of his late captain to be 
thrown into the boat, “as provisions for the voyage,” but 
the seaman had at once committed them to the deep, lest 
the temptation should be more than he could bear. He 
had lived upon his own huge frame until, at the last 
moment, the Morning Star had found him in that mad¬ 
ness which is the precursor of such a death. It was no 
bad find for Captain Scarrow, for, with a short-handed 
crew, such a seaman as this big New Englander was a 
prize worth having. He vowed that he was the only man 
whom Captain Sharkey had ever placed under an obli¬ 
gation. 

Now that they lay under the guns of Basseterre, all 
danger from the pirate was at an end, and yet the thought 
238 


CAPTAIN SHARKEY 

of him lay heavily upon the seaman’s mind as he watched 
the agent’s boat shooting out from the custom-house 
quay. 

“I’ll lay you a wager, Morgan,” said he to the first 
mate, “that the agent will speak of Sharkey in the first 
hundred words that pass his lips.” 

“Well, captain, I’ll have you a silver dollar, and chance 
it,” said the rough old Bristol man beside him. 

The negro rowers shot the boat alongside, and the 
linen-clad steersman sprang up the ladder. 

“Welcome, Captain Scarrow!” he cried. “Have you 
heard about Sharkey ?” 

The captain grinned at the mate. 

“What devilry has he been up to now ?” he asked. 

“Devilry! You’ve not heard, then! Why, we’ve got 
him safe under lock and key here at Basseterre. He was 
tried last Wednesday, and he is to be hanged to-morrow 
morning.” 

Captain and mate gave a shout of joy, which an 
instant later was taken up by the crew. Discipline was 
forgotten as they scrambled up through the break of the 
poop to hear the news. The New Englander was in the 
front of them with a radiant face turned up to heaven, 
for he came of the Puritan stock. 

“Sharkey to be hanged!” he cried. “You don’t know, 
Master Agent, if they lack a hangman, do you?” 

“Stand back!” cried the mate, whose outraged sense of 
discipline was even stronger than his interest at the news. 
“I’ll pay that dollar, Captain Scarrow, with the lightest 
heart that ever I paid a wager yet. How came the villain 
to be taken?” 

“Why, as to that, he became more than his own corn- 
239 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


rades could abide, and they took such a horror of him 
that they would not have him on the ship. So they 
marooned him upon the Little Mangles to the south of 
the Mysteriosa Bank, and there he was found by a Porto- 
bello trader, who brought him in. There was talk of 
sending him to Jamaica to be tried, but our good little 
governor, Sir Charles Ewan, would not hear of it. ‘He’s 
my meat,’ said he, ‘and I claim the cooking of it.’ If you 
can stay till to-morrow morning at ten, you’ll see the point 
swinging.” 

“I wish I could,” said the captain wistfully, “but I am 
sadly behind time now. I should start with the evening 
tide.” 

“That you can’t do,” said the agent with decision. 
“The Governor is going back with you.” 

“The Governor!” 

“Yes. He’s had a dispatch from Government to re¬ 
turn without delay. The fly-boat that brought it has gone 
on to Virginia. So Sir Charles has been waiting for you, 
as I told him you were due before the rains.” 

“Well, well!” cried the captain, in some perplexity, 
“I’m a plain seaman, and I don’t know much of gover¬ 
nors and baronets and their ways. I don’t remember 
that I ever so much as spoke to one. But if it’s in King 
George’s service, and he asks a cast in the Morning Star 
as far as London, I’ll do what I can for him. There’s my 
own cabin he can have and welcome. As to the cooking, 
it’s lobscouse and salmagundy six days in the week; but 
he can bring his own cook aboard with him if he thinks 
our galley too rough for his taste.” 

“You need not trouble your mind, Captain Scarrow,” 
said the agent. “Sir Charles is in weak health just now, 
240 


CAPTAIN SHARKEY 

only clear of a quartan ague, and it is likely he will keep 
his cabin most of the voyage. Dr. Larousse said that he 
would have sunk had the hanging of Sharkey not put 
fresh life in him. He has a great spirit in him, though, 
you must not blame him if he is somewhat short in his 
speech.” 

“He may say what he likes and do what he likes so 
long as he does not come athwart my hawse when I am 
working the ship,” said the captain. “He is Governor 
of St. Kitt’s, but I am Governor of the Morning Star. 
And, by his leave, I must weigh with the first tide, for I 
owe a duty to my employer, just as he does to King 
George.” 

“He can scarce be ready to-night, for he has many 
things to set in order before he leaves.” 

“The early morning tide, then.” 

“Very good. I shall send his things aboard to-night, 
and he will follow them to-morrow early if I can prevail 
upon him to leave St. Kitt’s without seeing Sharkey do 
the rogue’s hornpipe. His own orders were instant, so 
it may be that he will come at once. It is likely that Dr. 
Larousse may attend him upon the journey.” 

Left to themselves, the captain and mate made the best 
preparations which they could for their illustrious passen¬ 
ger. The largest cabin was turned out and adorned in 
his honour, and orders were given by which barrels of 
fruit and some cases of wine should be brought off to 
vary the plain food of an ocean-going trader. In the 
evening the Governor’s baggage began to arrive—great 
ironbound ant-proof trunks, and official tin packing-cases, 
with other strange-shaped packages, which suggested the 
cocked hat or sword within. And then there came a note, 
241 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


with a heraldic device upon the big red seal, to say that 
Sir Charles Ewan made his compliments to Captain 
Scarrow, and that he hoped to be with him in the morn¬ 
ing as early as his duties and his infirmities would permit. 

He was as good as his word, for the first grey of dawn 
had hardly begun to deepen into pink when he was 
brought alongside, and climbed with some difficulty up 
the ladder. The captain had heard the Governor was an 
eccentric, but he was hardly prepared for the curious 
figure who came limping feebly down his quarter-deck, 
his steps supported by a thick bamboo cane. He wore a 
Ramillies wig, all twisted into little tails like a poodle’s 
coat, and cut so low across the brow that the large green 
glasses which covered his eyes looked as if they were hung 
from it. A fierce beak of a nose, very long and very thin, 
cut the air in front of him. His ague had caused him to 
swathe his throat and chin with a broad linen cravat, and 
he wore a loose damask powdering-gown secured by a 
cord round the waist. As he advanced he carried his 
masterful nose high in the air, but his head turned slowly 
from side to side in the helpless manner of the purblind, 
and he called in a high, querulous voice for the captain. 

“You have my things?” he asked. 

“Yes, Sir Charles.” 

“Have you wine aboard?” 

“I have ordered five cases, sir.” 

“And tobacco?” 

“There is a keg of Trinidad.” 

“You play a hand of piquet?” 

“Passably well, sir.” 

“Then up anchor, and to sea!” 

There was a fresh westerly wind, so by the time the 
242 


CAPTAIN SHARKEY 


sun was fairly through the morning haze, the ship was 
hull down from the islands. The decrepit Governor still 
limped the deck, with one guiding hand upon the quarter- 
rail. 

“You are on Government service now, captain,” said 
he. “They are counting the days till I come to West¬ 
minster, I promise you. Have you all that she will 
carry?” 

“Every inch, Sir Charles.” 

“Keep her so if you blow the sails out of her. I fear, 
Captain Scarrow, that you will find a blind and broken 
man a poor companion for your voyage.” 

“I am honoured in enjoying your Excellency’s society,” 
said the captain. “But I am sorry that your eyes should 
be so afflicted.” 

“Yes, indeed. It is the cursed glare of the sun on the 
white streets of Basseterre which has gone far to burn 
them out.” 

“I had heard also that you had been plagued by a 
quartan ague.” 

“Yes; I have had a pyrexy, which has reduced me 
much.” 

“We had set aside a cabin for your surgeon.” 

“Ah, the rascal! There was no budging him, for he 
has a snug business amongst the merchants. But hark!” 

He raised his ring-covered hand in the air. From far 
astern there came the low deep thunder of cannon. 

“It is from the island!” cried the captain in astonish¬ 
ment. “Can it be a signal for us to put back?” 

The Governor laughed. 

“You have heard that Sharkey, the pirate, is to be 
hanged this morning. I ordered the batteries to salute 
^43 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


when the rascal was kicking his last, so that I might know 
of it out at sea. There’s an end of Sharkey!” 

“There’s an end of Sharkey!” cried the captain; and 
the crew took up the cry as they gathered in little knots 
upon the deck and stared back at the low, purple line of 
the vanishing land. 

It was a cheering omen for their start across the West¬ 
ern Ocean, and the invalid Governor found himself a 
popular man on board, for it was generally understood 
that but for his insistence upon an immediate trial and 
sentence, the villain might have played upon some more 
venal judge and so escaped. At dinner that day Sir 
Charles gave many anecdotes of the deceased pirate; and 
so affable was he, and so skilful in adapting his conver¬ 
sation to men of lower degree, that captain, mate, and 
Governor smoked their long pipes and drank their claret 
as three good comrades should. 

“And what figure did Sharkey cut in the dock?” asked 
the captain. 

“He is a man of some presence,” said the Governor. 

“I had always understood that he was an ugly, sneer¬ 
ing devil,” remarked the mate. 

“Well, I dare say he could look ugly upon occasions,” 
said the Governor. 

“I have heard a New Bedford whaleman say that he 
could not forget his eyes,” said Captain Scar row. “They 
were of the lightest filmy blue, with red-rimmed lids. 
Was that not so, Sir Charles?” 

“Alas, my own eyes will not permit me to know much 
of those of others! But I remember now that the Ad¬ 
jutant-General said that he had such an eye as you de¬ 
scribe, and added that the jury were so foolish as to be 
244 


CAPTAIN SHARKEY 


visibly discomposed when it was turned upon them. It 
is well for them that he is dead, for he was a man who 
would never forget an injury, and if he had laid hands 
upon any one of them he would have stuffed him with 
straw and hung him for a figure-head.” 

The idea seemed to amuse the Governor, for he broke 
suddenly into a high, neighing laugh, and the two sea¬ 
men laughed also, but not so heartily, for they remem¬ 
bered that Sharkey was not the last pirate who sailed the 
western seas, and that as grotesque a fate might come to 
be their own. Another bottle was broached to drink for 
a pleasant voyage, and the Governor would drink just one 
other on top of it, so that the seamen were glad at last to 
stagger off—the one to his watch and the other to his 
bunk. But when after his four hours’ spell the mate came 
down again, he was amazed to see the Governor in his 
Ramillies wig, his glasses, and his powdering-gown still 
seated sedately at the lonely table with his reeking pipe 
and six black bottles by his side. 

“I have drunk with the Governor of St. Kitt’s when 
he was sick,” said he, “and God forbid that I should ever 
try to keep pace with him when he is well.” 

The voyage of the Morning Star was a successful one, 
and in about three weeks she was at the mouth of the 
British Channel. From the first day the infirm Gover¬ 
nor had begun to recover his strength, and before they 
were half-way across the Atlantic he was, save only for 
his eyes, as well as any man upon the ship. Those who 
uphold the nourishing qualities of wine might point to 
him in triumph, for never a night passed that he did not 
repeat the performance of his first one. And yet he 
would be out upon deck in the early morning as fresh 
245 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


and brisk as the best of them, peering about with his 
weak eyes, and asking questions about the sail and the 
rigging, for he was anxious to learn the ways of the sea. 
And he made up for the deficiency of his eyes by obtain¬ 
ing leave from the captain that the New England seaman 
—he who had been cast away in the boat—should lead 
him about, and above all that he should sit beside him 
when he played cards and count the number of the pips, 
for unaided he could not tell the king from the knave. 

It was natural that this Evanson should do the Gover¬ 
nor willing service, since the one was the victim of the 
vile Sharkey, and the other was his avenger. One could 
see that it was a pleasure to the big American to lend his 
arm to the invalid, and at night he would stand with all 
respect behind his chair in the cabin and lay his great 
stub-nailed fore-finger upon the card which he should 
play. Between them there was little in the pockets 
either of Captain Scarrow or of Morgan, the first mate, 
by the time they sighted the Lizard. 

And it was not long before they found that all they had 
heard of the high temper of Sir Charles Ewan fell short 
of the mark. At a sign of opposition or a word of argu¬ 
ment his chin would shoot out from his cravat, his mas¬ 
terful nose would be cocked at a higher and more inso¬ 
lent angle, and his bamboo cane would whistle up over his 
shoulder. He cracked it once over the head of the car¬ 
penter when the man had accidentally jostled him upon 
the deck. Once, too, when there was some grumbling and 
talk of mutiny over the state of the provisions, he was of 
opinion that they should not wait for the dogs to rise, but 
that they should march forward and set upon them until 
they had trounced the devilment out of them. “Give me 
246 


CAPTAIN SHARKEY 


a knife and a bucket!” he cried with an oath, and could 
hardly be withheld from setting forth alone to deal with 
the spokesman of the seamen. 

Captain Scarrow had to remind him that though he 
might be only answerable to himself at St. Kitt’s, killing 
became murder upon the high seas. In politics he was, 
as became his official position, a stout prop of the House 
of Hanover, and he swore in his cups that he had never 
met a Jacobite without pistolling him where he stood. 
Yet for all his vapouring and his violence he was so good 
a companion, with such a stream of strange anecdote and 
reminiscence, that Scarrow and Morgan had never known 
a voyage pass so pleasantly. 

And then at length came the last day, when, after pass¬ 
ing the island, they had struck land again at the high white 
cliffs at Beachy Head. As evening fell the ship lay rolling 
in an oily calm, a league off from Winchelsea, with the 
long dark snout of Dungeness jutting out in front of her. 
Next morning they would pick up their pilot at the Fore¬ 
land, and Sir Charles might meet the king’s ministers at 
Westminster before the evening. The boatswain had 
the watch, and the three friends were met for a last turn 
of cards in the cabin, the faithful American still serving 
as eyes to the Governor. There was a good stake upon 
the table, for the sailors had tried on this last night to win 
their losses back from their passenger. Suddenly he 
threw all his cards down, and swept all the money into his 
long-flapped silken waistcoat. 

“The game’s mine!” said he. 

“Heh, Sir Charles, not so fast!” cried Captain Scar¬ 
row; “you have not played out the hand, and we are not 
the losers.” 


247 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


“Sink you for a liar!” said the Governor. “I tell you 
that I have played out the hand, and that you are a loser.” 
He whipped off his wig and his glasses as he spoke, and 
there was a high, bald forehead, and a pair of shifty blue 
eyes with the red rims of a bull terrier. 

“Good God!” cried the mate. “It’s Sharkey!” 

The two sailors sprang from their seats, but the big 
American castaway had put his huge back against the 
cabin door, and he held a pistol in each of his hands. The 
passenger had also laid a pistol upon the scattered cards 
in front of him, and he burst into his high, neighing 
laugh. 

“Captain Sharkey is the name, gentlemen,” said he, 
“and this is Roaring Ned Galloway, the quartermaster 
of the Happy Delivery. We made it hot, and so they 
marooned us: me on a dry Tortuga cay, and him in an 
oarless boat. You dogs—you poor, fond, water-hearted 
dogs—we hold you at the end of our pistols!” 

“You may shoot, or you may not!” cried Scarrow, 
striking his hand upon the breast of his frieze jacket. 
“If it’s my last breath, Sharkey, I tell you that you are a 
bloody rogue and miscreant, with a halter and hell-fire 
in store for you!” 

“There’s a man of spirit, and one of my own kidney, 
and he’s going to make a pretty death of it!” cried 
Sharkey. “There’s no one aft save the man at the wheel, 
so you may keep your breath, for you’ll need it soon. Is 
the dinghy astern, Ned?” 

“Ay, ay, captain!” 

“And the other boats scuttled?” 

“I bored them all in three places.” 

“Then we shall have to leave you, Captain Scarrow. 
248 


CAPTAIN SHARKEY 


You look as if you hadn't quite got your bearings yet. 
Is there anything you’d like to ask me?” 

“I believe you’re the devil himself!” cried the captain. 
‘‘Where is the Governor of St. Kitt’s?” 

“When last I saw him his Excellency was in bed with 
his throat cut. When I broke prison I learnt from my 
friends—for Captain Sharkey has those who love him 
in every port—that the Governor was starting for 
Europe under a master who had never seen him. I 
climbed his verandah and I paid him the little debt that 
I owed him. Then I came aboard you with such of his 
things as I had need of, and a pair of glasses to hide 
these tell-tale eyes of mine, and I had ruffled it as a 
Governor should. Now, Ned, you can get to work upon 
them.” 

“Help! Help! Watch ahoy!” yelled the mate; but the 
butt of the pirate’s pistol crashed down on his head, and 
he dropped like a pithed ox. Scarrow rushed for the 
door, but the sentinel clapped his hand over his mouth, 
and threw his other arm round his waist. 

“No use, Master Scarrow,” said Sharkey. “Let us see 
you go down on your knees and beg for your life.” 

“I’ll see you—” cried Scarrow, shaking his mouth clear. 

“Twist his arm round, Ned. Now will you?” 

“No; not if you twist it off.” 

“Put an inch of your knife into him.” 

“You may put six inches, and then I won’t.” 

“Sink me, but I like his spirit!” cried Sharkey. “Put 
your knife in your pocket, Ned. You’ve saved your skin, 
Scarrow, and it’s a pity so stout a man should not take 
to the only trade where a pretty fellow can pick up a liv¬ 
ing. You must be born for no common death, Scarrow, 
249 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 

since you have lain at my mercy and lived to tell the story. 
Tie him up, Ned.” 

“To the stove, captain?” 

“Tut, tut! there’s a fire in the stove. None of your 
rover tricks, Ned Galloway, unless they are called for, 
or I’ll let you know which one of us two is captain and 
which is quartermaster. Make him fast to the table.” 

“Nay, I thought you meant to roast him!” said the 
quartermaster. “You surely do not mean to let him go?” 

“If you and I were marooned on a Bahama cay, Ned 
Galloway, it is still for me to command and for you to 
obey. Sink you for a villain, do you dare to question 
my orders?” 

“Nay, nay, Captain Sharkey, not so hot, sir!” said the 
quartermaster, and, lifting Scarrow like a child, he laid 
him on the table. With the quick dexterity of a seaman, 
he tied his spreadeagled hands and feet with a rope which 
was passed underneath, and gagged him securely with the 
long cravat which used to adorn the chin of the Gover¬ 
nor of St. Kitt’s. 

“Now, Captain Scarrow, we must take our leave of 
you,” said the pirate. “If I had half a dozen of my brisk 
boys at my heels I should have had your cargo and your 
ship, but Roaring Ned could not find a foremast hand 
with the spirit of a mouse. I see there are some small 
craft about, and we shall get one of them. When Cap¬ 
tain Sharkey has a boat he can get a smack, when he has 
a smack he can get a brig, when he has a brig he can get a 
barque, and when he has a barque he’ll soon have a full- 
rigged ship of his own—so make haste into London town, 
or I may be coming back, after all, for the Morning Star” 

Captain Scarrow heard the key turn in the lock as they 
250 


CAPTAIN SHARKEY 


left the cabin. Then, as he strained at his bonds, he heard 
their footsteps pass up the companion and along the 
quarter-deck to where the dinghy hung in the stern. 
Then, still struggling and writhing, he heard the creak 
of the falls and the splash of the boat in the water. In 
a mad fury he tore and dragged at his ropes, until at last, 
with flayed wrists and ankles, he rolled from the table, 
sprang over the dead mate, kicked his way through the 
closed door, and rushed hatless on to the deck. 

“Ahoy! Peterson, Armitage, Wilson!” he screamed. 
“Cutlasses and pistols! Clear away the long-boat! Clear 
away the gig! Sharkey, the pirate, is in yonder dinghy. 
Whistle up the larboard watch, bo’sun, and tumble into 
the boats all hands.” 

Down splashed the long-boat and down splashed the 
gig, but in an instant the coxswains and crews were 
swarming up the falls on to the deck once more. 

“The boats are scuttled!” they cried. “They are leak¬ 
ing like a sieve.” 

The captain gave a bitter curse. He had been beaten 
and outwitted at every point. Above was a cloudless, 
starlit sky, with neither wind nor the promise of it. The 
sails flapped idly in the moonlight. Far away lay a fish¬ 
ing-smack, with the men clustering over their net. 

Close to them was the little dinghy, dipping and lifting 
over the shining swell. 

“They are dead men!” cried the captain. “A shout 
all together, boys, to warn them of their danger.” 

But it was too late. 

At that very moment the dinghy shot into the shadow 
of the fishing-boat. There were two rapid pistol-shots, 
a scream, and then another pistol-shot, followed by silence. 

251 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


The clustering fishermen had disappeared. And then, 
suddenly, as the first puffs of a land-breeze came out from 
the Sussex shore, the boom swung out, the mainsail filled, 
and the little craft crept out with her nose to the Atlantic. 


VIOLENCE 


By ALGERNON BLACKWOOD 


“ | 'y UT what seems so odd to me, so horribly pathetic, 
is that such people don’t resist,” said Leidall, sud¬ 
denly entering the conversation. The intensity 
of his tone startled everybody; it was so passionate, yet 
with a beseeching touch that made the women feel un¬ 
comfortable a little. “As a rule, I’m told, they submit 

willingly, almost as though-” 

He hesitated, grew confused, and dropped his glance 
to the floor; and a smartly-dressed woman, eager to be 
heard, seized the opening. “Oh, come now,” she laughed; 
“one always hears of a man being put into a strait waist¬ 
coat. I’m sure he doesn’t slip it on as if he were going to 
a dance!” And she looked flippantly at Leidall, whose 
casual manners she resented. “People are put under 
restraint. It’s not in human nature to accept it—healthy 
human nature, that is?” But for some reason no one 
took her question up. “That is so, I believe, yes,” a polite 
voice murmured, while the group at tea in the Dover 
Street Club turned with one accord to Leidall as to one 
whose interesting sentence still remained unfinished. He 
had hardly spoken before, and a silent man is ever credited 
with wisdom. 

“As though—you were just saying, Mr. Leidall?” a 
quiet little man in a dark corner helped him. 


From Ten Minute Stories, by Algernon Blackwood, by permission 
of E. P. Dutton and Company. 

253 




TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


“As though, I meant, a man in that condition of mind 
is not insane all through,” Leidall continued stammer¬ 
ingly; “but that some wise portion of him watches the 
proceeding with gratitude, and welcomes the protection 
against himself. It seems awfully pathetic. Still”— 
again hesitating and fumbling in his speech—“er—it 
seems queer to me that he should yield quietly to enforced 
restraint—the waistcoat, handcuffs, and the rest.” He 
looked round hurriedly, half suspiciously, at the faces in 
the circle, then dropped his eyes again to the floor. He 
sighed, leaning back in his chair. “I cannot understand 
it,” he added, as no one spoke, but in a very low voice, 
and almost to himself. “One would expect them to 
struggle furiously.” 

Someone had mentioned that remarkable book, The 
Mind that Found Itself, and the conversation had slipped 
into this serious vein. The women did not like it. What 
kept it alive was the fact that the silent Leidall, with his 
handsome, melancholy face, had suddenly wakened into 
speech, and that the little man opposite to him, half in¬ 
visible in his dark corner, was assistant to one of Lon¬ 
don’s great hypnotic doctors, who could, an he would, 
tell interesting and terrible things. No one cared to ask 
the direct question, but all hoped for revelations, possibly 
about people they actually knew. It was a very ordinary 
tea-party indeed. And this little man now spoke, though 
hardly in the desired vein. He addressed his remarks to 
Leidall across the disappointed lady. 

“I think, probably, your explanation is the true one,” 
he said gently, “for madness in its commoner forms is 
merely want of proportion; the mind gets out of right 
and proper relations with its environment. The majority 
254 


VIOLENCE 


of madmen are mad on one thing only, while the rest 
of them is as sane as myself—or you.” 

The words fell into the silence. Leidall bowed his 
agreement, saying no actual word. The ladies fidgeted. 
Someone made a jocular remark to the effect that most 
of the world was mad anyhow, and the conversation 
shifted with relief into a lighter vein—the scandal in the 
family of a politician. Everybody talked at once. Cigar¬ 
ettes were lit. The corner soon became excited and even 
uproarious. The tea-party was a great success, and the 
offended lady, no longer ignored, led all the skirmishes— 
towards herself. She was in her element. Only Leidall 
and the little invisible man in the corner took small part 
in it; and presently, seizing the opportunity when some 
new arrivals joined the group, Leidall rose to say his 
adieux, and slipped away, his departure scarcely noticed. 
Dr. Hancock followed him a minute later. The two 
men met in the hall; Leidall already had his hat and coat 
on. “I’m going West, Mr. Leidall. If that’s your way 
too, and you feel inclined for the walk, we might go 
together.” Leidall turned with a start. His glance took 
in the other with avidity—a keenly-searching, hungry 
glance. He hesitated for an imperceptible moment, then 
made a movement towards him, half inviting, while a 
curious shadow dropped across his face and vanished. It 
was both pathetic and terrible. The lips trembled. He 
seemed to say, “God bless you; do come with me!” But 
no words were audible. 

“It’s a pleasant evening for a walk,” added Dr. Han¬ 
cock gently; “clean and dry under foot for a change. I’ll 
get my hat and join you in a second.” And there was a 
hint, the merest flavour, of authority in his voice. 

255 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


That touch of authority was his mistake. Instantly 
Leidall’s hesitation passed. “I’m sorry,” he said abruptly, 
“but I’m afraid I must take a taxi. I have an appointment 
at the Club, and I’m late already.” “Oh, I see,” the other 
replied, with a kindly smile; “then I mustn’t keep you. 
But if you ever have a free evening, won’t you look me 
up, or come and dine? You’ll find my telephone num¬ 
ber in the book. I should like to talk with you about— 
those things we mentioned at tea.” Leidall thanked him 
politely and went out. The memory of the little man’s 
kindly sympathy and understanding eyes went with him. 

“Who was that man?” someone asked, the moment 
Leidall had left the tea-table. “Surely he’s not the Leidall 
who wrote that awful book some years ago?” 

“Yes—the Gulf of Darkness. Did you read it?” 

They discussed it and its author for five minutes, de¬ 
ciding by a large majority that it was the book of a 
madman. Silent, rude men like that always had a screw 
loose somewhere, they agreed. Silence was invariably 
morbid. 

“And did you notice Dr. Hancock? He never took 
his eyes off him. That’s why he followed him out like 
that. I wonder if he thought anything!” 

“I know Hancock well,” said the lady of the wounded 
vanity. “I’ll ask him and find out.” They chattered 
on, somebody mentioned a risque play, the talk switched 
into other fields, and in due course the tea-party came to 
an end. 

And Leidall, meanwhile, made his way towards the 
Park on foot, for he had not taken a taxi after all. The 
suggestion of the other man, perhaps, had worked upon 
him. He was very open to suggestion. With hands deep 
256 


VIOLENCE 


in his overcoat pockets, and head sunk forward between 
his shoulders, he walked briskly, entering the Park at one 
of the smaller gates. He made his way across the wet 
turf, avoiding the paths and people. The February sky 
was shining in the west; beautiful clouds floated over the 
houses; they looked like the shore-line of some radiant 
strand his childhood once had known. He sighed; thought 
dived and searched within; self-analysis, that old, im¬ 
placable demon, lifted its voice; introspection took the 
reins again as usual. There seemed a strain upon the 
mind he could not dispel. Thought circled poignantly. 
He knew it was unhealthy, morbid, a sign of those many 
years of difficulty and stress that had marked him so 
deeply, but for the life of him he could not escape from 
the hideous spell that held him. The same old thoughts 
bored their way into his mind like burning wires, tracing 
the same unanswerable questions. From this torture, 
waking or sleeping, there was no escape. Had a com¬ 
panion been with him it might have been different. If, 
for instance, Dr. Hancock- 

He was angry with himself for having refused— 
furious; it was that vile, false pride his long loneliness 
had fostered. The man was sympathetic to him, friendly, 
marvellously understanding; he could have talked freely 
with him, and found relief. His intuition had picked 
out the little doctor as a man in ten thousand. Why 
had he so curtly declined his gentle invitation? Dr. Han¬ 
cock knew; he guessed his awful secret. But how? In 
what had he betrayed himself? 

The weary self-questioning began again, till he sighed 
and groaned from sheer exhaustion. He must find peo¬ 
ple, companionship, someone to talk to. The Club—it 
257 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


crossed his tortured mind for a second—was impossible; 
there was a conspiracy among the members against him. 
He had left his usual haunts everywhere for the same 
reason—his restaurants where he had his lonely meals; 
his music-hall, where he tried sometimes to forget him¬ 
self ; his favourite walks, where the very policeman knew 
and eyed him. And, coming to the bridge across the 
Serpentine just then, he paused and leaned over the edge, 
watching a bubble rise to the surface. 

“I suppose there are fish in the Serpentine?” he said 
to a man a few feet away. 

They talked a moment—the other was evidently a clerk 
on his way home, and then the stranger edged off and 
continued his walk, looking back once or twice at the 
sad-faced man who had addressed him. “It’s ridiculous, 
that with all our science we can’t live under water as the 
fish do,” reflected Leidall, and moved on round the other 
bank of the water, where he watched a flight of duck whirl 
down from the darkening air and settle with a long, 
mournful splash beside the bushy island. “Or that, for 
all our pride of mechanism in a mechanical age, we can¬ 
not really fly.” But these attempts to escape from self 
were never very successful. Another part of him looked 
on and mocked. He returned ever to the endless intro¬ 
spection of self-analysis, and in the deepest moment of 
it—ran into a big, motionless figure that blocked his way. 
It was the Park policeman, the one who had always eyed 
him. He sheered off suddenly towards the trees, while 
the man, recognising him, touched his cap respectfully. 
“It’s a pleasant evening, sir; turned quite mild again.” 
Leidall mumbled some reply or other, and hurried on to 
hide himself among the shadows of the trees. The police- 
258 


VIOLENCE 


man stood and watched him, till the darkness swallowed 
him. “He knows too!” groaned the wretched man. And 
every bench was occupied; every face turned to watch 
him; there were even figures behind the trees. He dared 
not go into the street, for the very taxi-drivers were 
against him. If he gave an address, he would not be 
driven to it; the man would know, and take him elsewhere. 
And something in his heart, sick with anguish, weary 
with the endless battle, suddenly yielded. 

“There are fish in the Serpentine,” he remembered the 
stranger had said. “And,” he added to himself, with a 
wave of delicious comfort, “they lead secret, hidden lives 
that no one can disturb.” His mind cleared surprisingly. 
In the water he could find peace and rest and healing. 
Good Lord! How easy it all was! Yet he had never 
thought of it before. He turned sharply to retrace his 
steps, but in that very second the clouds descended upon 
his thought again, his mind darkened, he hesitated. Could 
he get out again when he had had enough? Would he 
rise to the surface? A battle began over these questions. 
He ran quickly, then stood still again to think the matter 
out. Darkness shrouded him. He heard the wind rush 
laughing through the trees. The picture of the whirring 
duck flashed back a moment, and he decided that the 
best way was by air, and not by water. He would fly 
into the place of rest, not sink or merely float; and he 
remembered the view from his bedroom window, high 
over old smoky London town, with a drop of eighty 
feet on to the pavements. Yes, that was the best way. 
He waited a moment, trying to think it all out clearly, 
but one moment the fish had it, and the next the birds. It 
was really impossible to decide. Was there no one who 
259 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


could help him, no one in all this enormous town who was 
sufficiently on his side to advise him on the point? Some 
clear-headed, experienced, kindly man? 

And the face of Dr. Hancock flashed before his vision. 
He saw the gentle eyes and sympathetic smile, remem¬ 
bered the soothing voice and the offer of companionship 
he had refused. Of course, there was one serious draw¬ 
back: Hancock knew. But he was far too tactful, too 
sweet and good a man to let that influence his judgment, 
or to betray in any way at all that he did know. 

Leidall found it in him to decide. Facing the entire 
hostile world, he hailed a taxi from the nearest gate upon 
the street, looked up the address in a chemist’s telephone 
book, and reached the door in a condition of delight and 
relief. Yes, Dr. Hancock was at home. Leidall sent 
his name in. A few minutes later the two men were 
chatting pleasantly together, almost like old friends, so 
keen was the little man’s intuitive sympathy and tact. Only 
Hancock, patient listener though he proved to be, was 
uncommonly full of words. Leidall explained the matter 
very clearly. “Now, what is your decision, Dr. Han¬ 
cock? Is it to be the way of the fish or the way of the 
duck?” And, while Hancock began his answer with slow, 
well-chosen words, a new idea, better than either, leaped 
with a flash into his listener’s mind. It was an inspira¬ 
tion. For where could he find a better hiding-place from 
all his troubles than Hancock himself? The man was 
kindly; he surely would not object. Leidall this time 
would not hesitate a second. He was tall and broad; Han¬ 
cock was small; yet he was sure there would be room. He 
sprang upon him like a wild animal. He felt the warm, 
thin throat yield and bend between his great hands . . . 

260 


VIOLENCE 


then darkness, peace and rest, a nothingness that surely 
was the oblivion he had so long prayed for. He had 
accomplished his desire. He had secreted himself for¬ 
ever from persecution—inside the kindliest little man he 
had ever met—inside Hancock. . . . 

He opened his eyes and looked about him into a room 
he did not know. The walls were soft and dimly coloured. 
It was very silent. Cushions were everywhere. Peaceful 
it was, and out of the world. Overhead was a skylight, 
and one window, opposite the door, was heavily barred. 
Delicious! No one could get in. He was sitting in a 
deep and comfortable chair. He felt rested and happy. 
There was a click, and he saw a tiny window in the door 
drop down, as though worked by a sliding panel. Then 
the door opened noiselessly, and in came a little man with 
smiling face and soft brown eyes—Dr. Hancock. 

Leidall’s first feeling was amazement. “Then I didn’t 
get into him properly after all! Or I’ve slipped out again, 
perhaps! The dear, good fellow!” And he rose to greet 
him. He put his hand out, and found that the other came 
with it in some inexplicable fashion. Movement was 
cramped. “Ah, then I’ve had a stroke,” he thought, as 
Hancock pressed him, ever so gently, back into the big 
chair. “Do not get up,” he said soothingly but with 
authority; “sit where you are and rest. You must take it 
very easy for a bit; like all clever men who have over¬ 
worked-” 

“I’ll get in the moment he turns,” thought Leidall. “I 
did it badly before. It must be through the back of his 
head, of course, where the spine runs up into the brain,” 
and he waited till Hancock should turn. But Hancock 
never turned. He kept his face towards him all the time, 
261 



TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


while he chatted, moving gradually nearer to the door. 
On Leidall’s face was the smile of an innocent child, but 
there lay a hideous cunning behind that smile, and the 
eyes were terrible. 

“Are those bars firm and strong,” asked Leidall, “so 
that no one can get in?” He pointed craftily, and the 
doctor, caught for a second unawares, turned his head. 
That instant Leidall was upon him with a roar, then sank 
back powerless into the chair, unable to move his arms 
more than a few inches in any direction. Hancock 
stepped up quietly and made him comfortable again with 
cushions. 

And something in Leidall’s soul turned round and 
looked another way. His mind became clear as daylight 
for a moment. The effort perhaps had caused the sudden 
change from darkness to great light. A memory rushed 
over him. “Good God!” he cried. “I am violent. I 
was going to do you an injury—you who are so sweet 
and good to me!” He trembled dreadfully, and burst into 
tears. “For the sake of Heaven,” he implored, looking 
up, ashamed and keenly penitent, “put me under restraint. 
Fasten my hands before I try it again.” He held both 
hands out willingly, beseechingly, then looked down, fol¬ 
lowing the direction of the other’s kind brown eyes. His 
wrists, he saw, already wore steel handcuffs, and a strait 
waistcoat was across his chest and arms and shoulders. 


THE REWARD OF ENTERPRISE 

By WARD MUIR 


T HIS is how it happened [said my friend Har- 
borough}. 

I’m a novelist, as you know, but if I hadn’t had 
to take to writing I’d have been a rolling stone by pro¬ 
fession and by inclination. In my more philosophic moods 
I perceive that, really, it was sheer luck . . . this occur¬ 
rence about which you’ve asked me to tell you. I should 
never have made a success of any other trade but author¬ 
ship. I’d have starved; instead I’m rather well off, as 
things go. But still- 

You understand I was by way of being a bit venture¬ 
some, as a young man. I did a certain amount of journal¬ 
ism, from time to time, but my secret hopes were set on 
all that is implied in that specious phrase, “seeing the 
world.” I wanted to see the world. 

Keeping this object in view I shipped on a tramp 
steamer, with whose captain I had struck up an ac¬ 
quaintanceship. Nominally I was the purser, actually I 
was the Captain’s guest. Cargo boats such as the S.S. 
Peterhof do not employ a purser. 

No need to narrate the history of that voyage nor dwell 
upon the trivial particulars of our life on board. Suffice 
it to say that in mid-Atlantic our engines had a break¬ 
down. The Peterhof came to a standstill. 

If it has ever happened to you during a big voyage you 
263 



TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


will know that there is something portentous about the 
cessation of a steamer’s machinery in mid-ocean. To be 
becalmed on a sailing ship may be boring: to be becalmed 
—if such an expression can be used—on a steamer is 
almost too queer to be boring. Day and night the en¬ 
gines have throbbed until their throbbing has penetrated 
into your very marrow, and when the throbbing abruptly 
dies you are sensible of a shock. When the Peterhof 
halted I ran up on deck as speedily as though we had had 
a collision. I saw, all round, nothing but sea, sea, sea, 
and it was far more amazing than if I had beheld an 
island or an iceberg or a raft of shipwrecked mariners, or 
any of the other picturesque phenomena which my fertile 
fancy had hastened to invent as an explanation for our 
stoppage. 

The Peterhofs engines were antiquated, break-downs 
had occurred before, and our two engineers, I learnt, 
would be able to effect a repair. Twenty-four hours’ 
labour would set us going again—it turned out to be only 
a slightly over-optimistic prophecy—and meanwhile, we 
were free to admire, as best we might, the somewhat 
monotonous beauties of the Atlantic. 

There was not a breath of wind; the sun blazed from 
a cloudless sky; as long as the Peterhof had been in 
motion we had considered the temperature fairly cool, but 
now that her motion was arrested the heat became very 
noticeable. The sea was, in a sense, absolutely smooth; 
but its smoothness did not imply flatness, any more than 
the smoothness of a carpet’s pile implies flatness if the 
carpet is being shaken. On the contrary, the Peterhof 
was rolling upon the undulations of a heavy ground- 
swell. The surface of that ground-swell was without a 
264 


THE REWARD OF ENTERPRISE 


wrinkle, polished and glossy like lacquer; but its hills 
and its dales were gigantically high and deep; far higher 
and far deeper than I had realised until the engines re¬ 
linquished their task of propelling us athwart them. Now, 
lying helpless upon the water, we swooped up to a glazed 
summit, swooped down to the bottom of a satiny gulf, 
swooped up again and down again, in a splendid, even 
oscillation—and (this was what seemed so extraordinary 
to a landsman)—in absolute silence. It was uncanny. 
Those fabulous billows never broke. There was not even 
a hiss of foam against the side of the steamer. The 
Peterhof just tobogganned down one stupendous gradient 
and up the next as though she had been sliding on oil. 

The thing fascinated me. I stood by the rail, revelling 
in this prodigous sea-saw, and only gradually did it dawn 
upon me that we were not really rushing down one slant 
and up the next, we were only being lifted up and down 
vertically. 

This discovery sounds foolish, but I can’t tell you how 
it excited me. I got an empty biscuit tin from the steward 
and threw it into the sea, as far as I could, and then 
watched it floating. You’d have said that that biscuit 
tin would have been drawn away by the strength of the 
swell, or else dashed against the Peterhofs side; instead 
it simply sat there at exactly the spot where it had fallen; 
and an hour after I had thrown it into the water it had 
shifted, perhaps, only six or eight inches nearer the 
steamer. 

A project was forming in my mind. I looked at the 
water. It was a peculiar, vitreous green, closer under 
the steamer, was transparent to the depth of many feet. 
Beneath my shoe-soles the poop was hot; over-side, the 
265 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


sea looked inexpressibly inviting. And on a sudden I 
turned to the drowsing Captain and exclaimed: “I want 
to bathe.” 

“To bathe?” The Captain gazed at me. 

“Why not?” 

The Captain yawned out some lethargic suggestion to 
the effect that to bathe would be dangerous because of the 
depth—as though I’d be more apt to drown in three miles 
of water than in three fathoms. 

Seafaring people are odd in that way—I don’t mean 
in their ignorance of swimming, though, to be sure, the 
average sailor is seldom a swimmer. They’re so—how 
shall I express it?—so unenterprising. In the midst of 
adventure and romance they are stirred by no recognition 
either of the adventures or the romantic. 

I was a city-bred youngster, who had never been out 
of hail of the homeland before, and I possessed more 
enterprise in my little finger than that far-travelled Cap¬ 
tain had in the whole of his weather-worn, hulking lump 
of a carcass. I wanted to bathe. I wanted to bathe in 
the mid-Atlantic. I had learnt to bathe in the public 
swimming-bath near my old school, and now I wanted 
to try a swimming-bath three miles deep and tilting con¬ 
tinuously at an angle of I don’t know how many degrees. 
The notion was gorgeous. 

“I can swim,” I said. “You needn’t be afraid.” 

“But the waves’ll sweep you away.” 

“There aren’t any waves. Watch this biscuit tin. The 
top of the Atlantic, at this moment, is like a string which 
is being twanged. The vibrations are a hundred yards 
across, or more, and they look as though they were travel¬ 
ling along the string; I suppose they are travelling along 
266 


THE REWARD OF ENTERPRISE 


the string; but a fly sitting on the string doesn’t travel 
along with the vibrations, it only travels up and down. 
If I go in to bathe I shan’t be swept away.” 

The Captain hadn’t thought of it in that light. He 
tried to argue—but my biscuit tin answered his argument. 
And eventually he allowed me to have the ladder lowered; 
I stripped, descended the ladder, and launched myself into 
the sea. 

I struck out, to get clear of the ship, then ceased swim¬ 
ming and looked around me. The sea was coldish, but 
not unendurable—and anyhow I was too much in love 
with my situation to bother about that. Behind me the 
Peterhof towered, like a cliff; I had never realised, before, 
how big a five-thousand-ton vessel looks from the water. 
At her rail I could see a cluster of the crew, watching me; 
the Captain on the poop. From somewhere in the in¬ 
terior of the ship came the sound of hammering—the en¬ 
gineers at work—and I noticed that this sound reached 
me more clearly now than when I was on board. 

But if the Peterhof appeared strange, from the water, 
how much stranger was the view in the opposite direction! 
Or rather, the absence of view! 

The ground-swell had looked formidable when I was 
on the Peterhof s deck; here its aspect was terrific. The 
crystalline slope in which I was cradled seemed to reach 
the sky; yet, without having climbed it, I immediately 
found myself, instead of looking up the slope, looking 
down it—down an oblique abyss of gleaming profundity. 
I seemed to fall and fall and fall; nevertheless, there was 
no spasm of nausea; although I was falling I was sup¬ 
ported, sensuously, in my fall . . . and I never reached 
the finish of the fall; it merged, imperceptibly, into an 
267 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


ascent; and a moment later I was surveying a fresh trough 
of glassiness, or else gazing audaciously downward, down¬ 
ward on to the deck of the Peterhof . 

It was overwhelming. Never in all my life have I 
attained to a rapture comparable with that bathe in mid- 
Atlantic. I knew, even at the time, that it would be un¬ 
forgettable. I had aspired to be able to say that I had 
swum in water three miles deep . . . oh, never mind 
what vain boast I had promised myself. Boasting was 
forgotten. I was experiencing. I was surrendered to 
an ecstasy, an enchantment, a glee, beyond expression 
grandiose and delicious. I lolled in the pellucid water, 
not troubling to swim. I let myself go, in those dizzy 
soarings and sinkings; I abandoned myself to this vast 
and beautiful force; I felt at once infinitely little and in¬ 
finitely great. 

The whole adventure was half terrifying and half . . . 
well, comfortable. Perched on the crown of one of those 
flawless ridges I felt, as I toppled over, that I must either 
be smashed to pieces at the end of the plunge or engulfed 
in some horrid under-tow. But I knew that nothing of 
the sort would happen. Quietly I paddled with my arms 
and feet; almost contemptuously I gave myself to the 
puissant and colossal rhythm which swayed me as high 
as a cathedral at every swing and then gently rocked me 
down as deep as a valley. I tell you, the sensation was 
sublime . . . and I hadn’t even got my hair wet! 

I remembered, in the middle of my bliss, this perfectly 
incongruous fact that I hadn’t got my hair wet, and I 
prepared to “duck.” But at that moment I heard a shout 
from the deck of the Peterhof. 

I turned in the water, and saw that the Captain was 
268 


THE REWARD OF ENTERPRISE 

gesticulating to me, but I couldn’t hear what he was say¬ 
ing. The crew were shouting also, and one of them 
had got a coil of rope over his arm and seemed to be 
making ready to throw it. What did they mean ? 

Stupidly, in the tingling ardour and gusto of my en¬ 
joyment, I didn’t make out, for a minute, what they were 
driving at; it occurred to me that they had taken it into 
their heads that because I wasn’t swimming I had got 
cramp. I signalled cheerily to them, to reassure them; 
but they did not cease shouting . . . and then, as I turned 
again, a little, in the water, I knew. . . . 

Near the skyline rim of the superb mountain-range 
upon which I was commencing to rise I saw, shadowy in 
the translucent green, an unmistakable shape—the shape 
of a great fish: a shark. Its fin cut the surface like a 
knife. For one instant I stared, and in that instant I 
observed, with a vivid clearness, all manner of minute 
details—the burnished sheen on the water, the glistening 
tautness of its lofty skyline, the sapphire blue of the sky 
itself, and, most lucidly of all, the silhouette of the shark. 
Every movement of the shark was now plain to me ; and 
it was moving, there was no doubt of it: a trail of bub¬ 
bles streamed from its flank and a tiny streak of froth 
fluttered behind the fin. The shark was not passive, in the 
element, as I was; it was monarch of the waves, it could 
drive through them with the precision of a torpedo. I 
had invaded a realm which I had no business to invade 
. . . and its guardian was come to punish me. 

An astonishingly coherent train of reflections such as 
these whirled round my brain. They must have occupied 
a fraction of a second. I know that, at all events, I struck 
out for the Peterhof without any apparent pause. My 
269 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


arms and legs worked frantically; I swum as I had never 
swum before. I hurled myself through the water. 

Fortunately I had gone only a very short distance from 
the foot of the steamer’s ladder. It seemed remote 
enough, though, I can tell you! My eyes were bursting 
out of their sockets, but I could dimly see the Captain 
leaning on the rail and shouting, and some of the men 
running down the ladder to receive me. Then the rope 
was flung. It splashed across me. I grasped it. I dug 
my nails into it. I clung to it with a grip so fierce that 
I felt as though I was crushing it. Simultaneously the 
men at the other end of the rope began pulling, and I was 
jerked through the water in a lather of spray which 
swirled round my shoulders. My arms and head were 
above the water, I was being dragged so fast up the steam¬ 
er’s side. I could still see the Captain, vaguely, confusedly. 
His mouth was open, his hands were waving. But I 
wasn’t interested in him, I was only interested in what 
was pursuing behind me. Gad! That was an awful 
moment. I dream of it, sometimes, even now: the dis¬ 
gusting, obscene terror of that dash for safety . . . and 
I wake sweating with the horror of it. 

Harborough paused. 

“And how did your adventure end?” I asked. 

“I don’t know. I lost consciousness. But I kept tight 
on to the rope. They hauled me on board . . . they told 
me afterwards that I hadn’t even got my hair wet . . . 
but ...” he hesitated. 

“I’d had my experience—a never-to-be-forgotten ex¬ 
perience. Dash it!” he laughed. “It was almost worth 
it, I swear . . . and I’m making money, now, as a 
270 


THE REWARD OF ENTERPRISE 


novelist, whereas if I’d continued my life of rolling stone 
I’d certainly have arrived in prison or the poorhouse. 
Yes, I suppose that every disaster has its compensations. 

“But I confess I didn’t think so when I awoke on board 
the Peterhof —we were plug-plugging onwards again by 
that time—and found that I’d got only one leg.” 


GREAR’S DAM 

By MORLEY ROBERTS 


HERE was dust everywhere; it was a red-hot 



world of dust. It lay upon the roads where the 


labouring wheel tracks marked them out; but the 
whole long plain was dust as well. Neither grass nor any 
green thing showed, and dead, dry salt-bush, eaten by the 
sheep till it looked like broken peasticks, was dust colour 
to the dancing horizon of that world of thirst. For 
seven months and a week, by Wilson’s almanac, there had 
been no rain, and what dew had fallen the hot air drank 
when the fierce sun rose. And now not even the little 
fenced garden at Warribah showed any sign of verdure. 
Water was precious, and each day the north wind drank 
the water-holes drier and drier yet. 

But, though the world of desolate Warribah was brown, 
in the roots of grass and the mere sticks of salt-bush was 
sufficient nourishment to keep life in the sheep who moved 
across the burnt paddocks of the station; what they 
needed, and what they began to suffer for was water, and 
the cloudless sky, luminous and terrible, bent* over their 
world and breathed fire upon them. The wind out of the 
Austral tropics was as fierce as a blowpipe flame, or so it 
seemed. Hope and prosperity melted under it, and the 
home at Warribah dissolved. 

“I shall go mad,” said Wilson. And having said it, 
he sent his wife away to the south. He could not keep a 


272 


GREAR’S DAM 


cheerful face before her; it was easier to lie upon paper, 
easier to drift into silence that was not disturbed by her 
tears. He was a lonely man again, as lonely as when he 
had first fought with the bush, and conquered a space for 
himself where no water ran. 

And now the conquered territory that he had hoped to 
keep for the uses of civilisation called in the sun and the 
north wind, and there was a great fight in progress be¬ 
tween man and nature. As he walked over what he had 
won, or as he galloped, the caked and cracked earth fell 
into powder, and rose choking and impalpable, as fine as 
flour. The gaunt, spare box trees of the plains 
were powdered with its red-white film; their dry ver¬ 
dure was obscured. The dust was mud upon his lips, 
mud upon his cheeks as he sweated ice, to think the day 
was coming when there could be no hope for him and no 
help. 

“How long now?” he asked himself. 

And all about the plains rose columns of dust as the 
uneasy, fretful sheep, to whom his men doled water, 
moved up the wind seeking more. 

“After ten years—this,” said Wilson, and he laughed. 
But those who heard him laugh shivered, and contracted 
their brows. For he was a hard worker, and had slaved 
for this—for bankruptcy, a sky of brass. 

“The boss is crazy,” said the men at the hut. 

An immense, intolerable sense of pity for the sheep 
possessed him. He had no children, and the land he held 
had been as a child to him. Now the plains he had de¬ 
lighted in were become ingrate. They refused him help. 
The sheep were his children and his delight. He knew 
thousands of them by sight, for he had the shepherd’s 
273 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


eye. There was a character about the Warribah sheep 
that he had bestowed by his care and by his choice. He 
had fenced them in against straying; had chased the cow¬ 
ardly dingo and had slain him; he had rejoiced in the 
grass and the whitening cotton-bush, and the succulence 
of thick-fleshed salt-bush. How often he had ridden out 
and watched the sheep graze; it was a happy world when 
the rains in their due season ceased, and the time for 
shearing came. It was a riotous pleasure to hear the click 
of the shears. How the white inner fleece gleamed and 
fell over, and parted and showed its woven beauty! The 
movements of the shearers, and the sound of them, and 
the sound of the pent or loosened sheep wove itself into 
a kind of fabric; in the loom of time and the due sweet 
season pleasure grew, and success, and the joy of well¬ 
doing. 

And now there was death in the air and in the north 
wind. And behind it ruin. There his ten thousand 
children would perish off the face of the inexorable earth 
and be no more than white bones lying heaped against a 
northern fence where no water was. He laughed a thin, 
crackling laugh, and walked to and fro in front of his 
lonely house. 

“The boss is crazy,” his men had said. Now in the 
hot and idle noon they sat in the southward shadow of the 
crackling hut and watched him. The old cook, a blear- 
eyed outcast thrown up by the seas upon the coast of Aus¬ 
tralia, broke suddenly into a drivelling yarn. 

“I knew it worse nor this—hell’s flames never beat it, 
on the Bogan that year-” 

He mumbled on. 

“So they died, and the horses, too. Oh, it was cruel, 
274 



GREAR’S DAM 


cruel. And Webber cut his throat from ear to ear, cut 
his crazy ’ead ’arf off.” 

“What of your paddock, Jim?” asked Hill, the old 
hand of Warribah. The young boundary rider spat drily. 

“The jumbucks is suckin’ mud. The water stinks of 
yolk. You can smell it a mile off. Ter-morrer I’ll have 
to fetch ’em in.” 

The black and red ants ran riot in the hut and outside 
of it. The insect world flourished and abounded. But 
for all their bronze there was a pallid look about the men. 
Nature was no friend of theirs; they looked out on fire 
and blinding light. 

“I never knowed it worse.” 

But old Blear Eyes had. 

“So he blew his brains out.” 

“Oh, dry up,” said Hill, but the cook murmured of 
ancient disasters on the Darling and the Macquarie. 

“Did you die of thirst, you old croaker, and jump up 
to choke us?” 

And still Wilson wandered to and fro in the sunlight, 
though the sky was inexorable. 

“He’ll be shakin’ his fist at it yet,” said the cook, “and 
when a man does that he never comes to no good. It’s 
all up with them as shakes a fist at ’eaven. I’ve seen it 
myself. Now it was in ’79 that Jones of Quandong Flats 
went mad. He shook ’is fist at the sky. I seen him, and 
the next morning ’e was ravin’ ’orrid, as though the 
’orrors of drink was on ’im. And well I knowed ’em 
then.” 

The boss came towards them through the hot sand, 
and he leant in the shade against the pole on which the 
men’s saddles hung. The men looked downcast and half- 

275 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


ashamed. Sydney Jim lost all his flashness and moved 
uneasily. And the old cook shambled into his kitchen 
and fell to work upon his bread. 

‘‘There’s little water in the Ten-Mile Tank, Jim?” 

“They was suckin’ mud this morning, sir,” said Jim. 

Wilson tugged at his grizzled beard and pulled his sun¬ 
burnt hat over his eyes. 

“We should have put down wells,” said Hill. 

Wilson broke into sudden blasphemy, and checked it 
with a kind of gasp, as though he felt that madness lay 
just beyond the limits of his self-control. 

“So we should,” he said; “so we should.” 

And he walked away. 

“You took that cursin’ very quiet,” said Jim. And 
there was somethnig in Hill’s eye that made him flinch. 

“Oh, well,” he said apologetically, and Hill glared at 
him. The heat was in more than one. 

“My son,” said Hill, “I’ve half a mind-” 

And then he rose and followed Wilson. He caught 
him up and talked hard till Wilson shook his head and 
went inside and slammed the door. 

“He should make it up with Grear, and if Grear let 
him down on to the river he might save some.” 

For Warribah was in the back-blocks, and Grear held 
all the river frontage for twenty miles. 

“But they hate each other, and Wilson ain’t the man to 
crawl,” said Hill. “He’s a good sort. I’ll go myself.” 

He went back to the hut and, taking his saddle and 
bridle, walked to the horse paddock, which seemed as 
barren as a stockyard. He caught his horse, that was 
standing at the gate and looking wistfully towards the 
stable as if he knew that good feed was there. 

276 



GREAR’S DAM 


“Come,” said Hill, and he rode south through the pine 
scrub towards Grear’s. He came to the station as the 
sun went down, and when he asked for the boss Grear 
came out. 

“Oh you!” he said roughly. “And what d’ye want?” 

He was a long, thin man with a cold eye and thin lips, 
and as he looked at him Hill felt that it was a foolish 
errand he had come on. The man was worse than he had 
imagined. It seemed that Wilson was right. To ask 
Grear for anything was to invite insult. And though 
Hill had come twenty miles to ask he turned away. 

“I haven’t seen you for nigh on a year,” said he, “and 
now I’ve seen you, why, I shan’t weep if I never see you 
again.” 

He got upon his horse solemnly and turned away, leav¬ 
ing Grear with an open mouth. 

“I was a fool to come,” said Hill, as he ploughed his 
way among the sandhills. “He used to reckon that all 
the back-blocks was his, and Wilson took ’em up. Grear 
don’t forgive.” 

The night had come upon the land, but there was no 
remission of the hot north wind. The heated earth ra¬ 
diated heat still, while in the clear obscure of the heavens 
the stars glittered like sharp points of steel. They stabbed 
Hill’s very heart as he rode and looked into the rainless 
depths of heaven. For the sky was no overarching dome 
at that season. It was an awful emptiness without form; 
it was space itself, unmitigated and terrible, and heaven’s 
lamps were near and far and farther still, while black, 
starless spaces showed like unfathomable patches in a 
silent sea. 

“Good God!” said Hill, and fear got hold of him 
277 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


suddenly. He roused his horse to a canter for the sake 
of the noise of the motion. The sky appalled him, and a 
peculiar sense of reversion took him. He was hung over 
depths, and seemed to cling to the suspended earth. 

“I’m crazy myself/’ said Hill, with a quiver in his 
voice. And his very voice broke the silence like a pistol- 
shot. It made him start until he heard a sheep’s faint 
baa in the distance. And then a mopoke called its mate 
in the trees by an old dry creek. Hill pulled up. 

“But it ain’t a creek after all,” he said to himself. “It’s 
a Billabong, but it’s twenty years since water came out of 
the Lachlan so far as Warribah, and Grear put a dam 
there fifteen years ago. Ah! if the river only rose up, 
and came down roarin’. But it won’t; it won’t.” 

As he dreamed of the river, now like a low water-hole 
with never a current in it, Wilson, at home, lay in an un¬ 
easy sleep. He, too, dreamed, and dreamed of rain, and 
he woke himself shouting, “Rain!” and in his confusion 
called “Mary” to his wife five hundred miles away. 

“Oh God! I dreamt it again,” he said. “I dreamed 
of rain in our old place east, and the river came down with 
thunder and floods, and the land grew green in an hour 
—green, green!” 

He fell asleep again, and when he woke at dawn he 
was oddly cheerful. Perhaps the rest from anxiety in 
that happy dream had taken part of the strain from his 
weary mind. 

“I do feel as if it had rained somewhere,” he said; 
“and if the weather only breaks anywhere we may have 
it here.” 

“Don’t you think it cooler?” he said to Hill next morn¬ 
ing. But the sky was brass and the sun white hot. 

278 


GREAR’S DAM 

That evening a man riding through to Conoble from 
Condobolin told him that he had heard it had rained east 
of Forbes. And another man who camped at the Ten- 
Mile Clump said he knew there had been a great thunder¬ 
storm to the east. 

“I dreamed it, so I did!” cried Wilson; “and the Lach¬ 
lan’s coming down.” 

His jaw fell even as he spoke. What use was 
the Lachlan to him out in the beyond, when Grear’s 
lay between? He had no river frontage. Grear had 
it all. 

In such a country, in spite of its apparent desolation, 
news travels fast. They heard that the Lachlan, so quiet 
at Condobolin, was running hard at Forbes. It was out 
in the flats, where the felled trees marked the old mining 
camp. There had been a storm, a great cloudburst, in its 
head waters, and the river grew alive. Wilson saddled 
up and rode thirty miles to see it, and came to the gum- 
lined ditch just in <time to hear the stream awake. It 
stirred before his eyes, it became turbid, grew grey, 
bubbled, moved and ran, with sticks and leaves and 
branches on its full tide. 

And still the sky overhead was fire, and the sun a flame. 
Wilson cursed it, and prayed to the beautiful grey water. 
Why should not rain come there ? And soon. But as he 
rode back he came to sheep of his that stood against a 
fence, and pressed on it, as though water was beyond it. 
Pity stirred him; he drove them through a gate, and let 
them suck his last low tank. 

That night Wilson came to the men’s hut under its 
pines in the sand dune, and called to Hill. 

“Hill, I want to speak to you,” he said, and presently 
279 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


his man came out into the night. The stars were bril¬ 
liant. Jupiter was like a little moon, and cast faint 
shadows. 

“There’ll be no rain here,” said Wilson. “Were you 
sleeping? I can’t sleep! Do you hear?” 

He waved his hand around the barren horizon. 

“I hear,” said Hill. 

He heard the sheep. 

“You say that old Billabong once came down to Warri- 
bah?” asked Wilson. 

Hill nodded. 

“So they say. But Grear’s dam would stop it.” 

“He’s no right to have it there,” said Wilson, sav- 
agely. “Look, Hill, I can’t sleep. I’ll ride out to the 
dam.” 

“I’ll come with you,” said Hill. 

“You’re a good sort, Jack,” cried the boss. And they 
rode together through the wonderful night, that was so 
terrible to them, with its hot, dry air out of the oven of 
the north. 

When they came at last to the long, low dam they tied 
their horses to saplings, and sat down. Wilson spoke 
after a quarter of an hour’s silence. 

“It would be hard to lose it after these years,” he said. 
“And here’s Grear’s dam with a fence atop of it. He’s 
a hard one, Jack!” 

“Ay,” said Hill, “he’s hard.” 

And Wilson, who had not really slept for days, lay 
down upon the earth and dozed, while the star shadows 
of the gaunt thin boxes moved a foot. In the hollow of the 
Billabong some dry reeds, like a cane-brake, rustled faintly 
in the air. The leaves of the trees crackled, and under- 
280 


GREAR’S DAM 


neath these sharper sounds was the hum of the insect 
world. Far away, on every side, the sheep called uneasily 
for water. What had seemed silence grew into a very 
chorus, organic with the earth. The horses champed their 
bits and pawed the dusty soil; and once one whinnied, and 
was answered by a far-off call from Grear’s. 

“I wonder what the river’s like,” thought Hill. He 
pulled out his pipe and lighted it. The flare of the match 
extinguished the starlight for a moment, and then the 
darkness melted once more, and he saw each separate 
tree, each leaf, each reed. 

“I wonder.” 

For if the river was in high flood, and over the banks, 
the Billabong must be full at Grear’s. And suddenly he 
heard a sound that he knew well. He laid his hand upon 
Wilson’s shoulder. 

“D’ye hear it, sir? What is it?” 

But both knew. Grear’s sheep were moving from east 
and west towards water. 

“The blackfellows were right,” said Wilson. “The 
Billabong is coming down.” 

The horses trampled uneasily, and seemed aware of a 
change. Perhaps they too smelt the grey flood as it 
crawled. And all the air seemed full of whispers, loud 
and louder yet. For even the thinned bush is alive, and 
holds carnival at midnight and beyond it. A snake crawled 
by them on the dam, and suddenly being aware of nigh 
enemies, it slipped away hastily, and hid in the hollow 
trunk of a fallen dwarf box. The sheep on Warribah 
grew more uneasy; he heard a distant baa, and then a 
nearer cry, and a plaintive chorus came down the dry, hot 
wind. 


281 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 

“I can’t listen to ’em,” said Wilson. “It makes me 
mad.” 

He rested his head upon his knees, and kept his hands 
to his ears. But suddenly he rose up. 

“If the water comes we’ll cut the dam, Hill.” 

“I would,” said Hill. 

“Go back and fetch Jim, and bring shovels,” said Wil¬ 
son. “I’ll cut it. If the water comes, I’ve a right to it.” 

And Hill rode homeward fast. And as he rode the 
boss sat still upon the dam, and looked upon the faintly- 
outlined hollow of the ancient waterway. And again he 
dozed, and did not see that round the far bend of the hol¬ 
low came a sneaking, quiet band of grey water, like a 
crawling snake. But as he slept the night chorus in¬ 
creased, and away to the south the full sheep baa’ed with 
content. The Warribah sheep heard and knew, and 
moved south through the night: and suddenly ten thou¬ 
sand broke into a gallop, and stayed in a heap against the 
fence that topped the dam. Their voices agonised; they 
woke Wilson suddenly, and he reached out his hand and 
touched water. 

And he heard horses galloping. This was Hill re¬ 
turning. 

“Thank God!” said Wilson, and he prayed to Heaven 
with sudden thankfulness. 

But then he started, for the horses came from the 
south. They came from Grear’s, and he knew what that 
meant. 

“I’ll do it if I have to kill him,” said Wilson. For 
behind him the painful chorus of the sheep was deafen¬ 
ing. He saw them packed against the bulging wires. 
His heart bled for them, his children. 

282 


GREAR’S DAM 


And then three horses burst through the thin bush. 

“Oh, we’re in time,” said Grear. “I thought as much, 
but we’re in time. Who’s that ?” 

“Wilson of Warribah,” said Wilson. “Grear, you will 
let the water through.” 

And Grear laughed. 

“To you that sneaked in and took up my back-lots? 
Oh, it’s likely, likely!” 

“But the sheep are dying, Grear.” 

“Mine ain’t,” said Grear. “Get over the fence and off 
my land. I’ll not have you here.” 

And Wilson burst into a passionate appeal that was 
almost a scream. 

“Look here, man, if you are a man. I’ll give you ten 
per cent of ’em to cut the dam. They’re dying. Oh, my 
God! hear ’em, Grear; hear ’em! And I’ve bred ’em. I 
watched ’em grow. Oh, Grear, I’ll give you half!” 

And Grear swore horribly. 

“I’ll see them die, and see you get out. I don’t want 
you here.” 

And now in the noise the sheep made it was difficult to 
hear a man speak. But the water grew up silently, and 
spread out, filling the hollow—a grateful and splendid 
sheet. 

“ ’Tain’t all yours,” screamed Wilson. “The dam’s 
not legal. You’ve no right to rob me and my sheep.” 

“Then go to law, you dog, and have it proved,” said 
Grear. And as he spoke Hill came galloping, and 
with him Jim and two other men. And they carried 
shovels. 

“Look,” said Wilson. “We’re five to you three, you 
and your men. I mean to have the water.” 

283 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


“Never!” cried Grear, and getting off his horse he 
walked up the dam to where Wilson stood. 

“Get over the fence,” he said. 

And Wilson leant against the fence and the sheep be¬ 
hind him. He dabbled with his hand in their wool. Their 
hot breath fanned him. 

“Don’t, Grear, don’t,” he pleaded. “What would you 
think if I did the same to you?” 

“You can’t,” said Grear, and he laughed. “I’ve the 
river at my back.” 

And Hill with a spade in his hand pressed through the 
sheep, until he came to Wilson. He touched the boss’s 
shoulder, and Wilson calmed as he took the spade. 

“You don’t mean that they’re to die, Grear, do you?” 
he asked, with a catch in his voice. 

“What’s that to me?” 

“It’s much to me,” said Wilson. “Oh, Grear, I’d rather 
be hanged than let it be.” 

“Would you? Then be hanged, you rat!” said Grear. 

And Wilson lifted the spade, and split Grear’s head 
with it, and the man fell back into the water, and dyed 
it with his blood. But he was dead before he touched the 
silver grey stream that had slain him. 

And Wilson fell to work digging. 

“Good God!” said Hill, and the dead squatter’s men 
cried out. 

“Dig, dig,” said Wilson. “Dig! Grear’s got his 
water. I’ll have mine.” 

When the sun rose his sheep were content. 

“Now we’ll see what the law says,” cried Wilson. And 
he rode south to find the law. 


284 


THE KING OF MALEKA 

By H. DE VERE STACPOOLE 

I 

C ONN ART had started in life with a fine, open, 
believing disposition, and with that disposition 
for his chief asset he had entered the world of 
business. At thirty he had lost nearly everything but his 
heart, yet it was stolen from him, also, by one Mary 
Bateman of Boston, a quiet-looking little woman, en¬ 
dowed with common sense, a few thousand dollars and a 
taste for travel. It was this taste, combined with a slight 
weakness of the lungs, that induced Connart to go into 
the Pacific trade, also a legacy, from an English relation, 
amounting to some two thousand pounds odd, which en¬ 
abled him to make the new start in business without call¬ 
ing on his wife’s capital. 

Dobree of San Francisco gave him the pitch. Connart 
had the qualities of his defects. Men robbed him, but 
they liked him. Men are queer things. Dobree, in busi¬ 
ness, was a very tough person indeed, quite without any 
finer feelings, and never giving a cent or a chance away, 
yet, taking a liking to Connart, he gave him a house, a 
go-down, and the chance of success on this Island, by 
name of Maleka, for nothing. 

“I had a station there up to six months ago,” said 
Dobree, “but I’m getting rid of my copra interests. You 

285 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 

can have the house, charter a schooner and fill up with 
trade and go down there, it’s a good climate and will suit 
your wife. You won’t make a fortune, but you won’t do 
badly if you stick to your guns and don’t let the Kanakas 
get the weather gauge on you. There’s only one man 
there, Seedbaum is his name, he’s a tough customer by all 
accounts, but there’s copra enough for two—I know a 
schooner you can have, the Golden Gleam; she’s owned by 
old Tom Bowlby. I’ve got a fellow at a station on 
Tomasu, that’s a hundred and fifty miles west of Maleka. 
There’s a cargo waiting shipment there. Bowlby can 
drop you and your stuff at Maleka, then pick up my cargo 
at the other place. You won’t have your copra ready for 
some months and you can make arrangements with him 
to come back for it. You might make arrangements to 
work in future with Bowlby, he’s a straight man. You 
might work with him as partner.” 

It was easy to be seen that Dobree was not only giving 
things away, but going out of his course to make things 
smooth. Connart felt glowingly thankful. 

“It’s more than good of you,” said he, “but it seems 
to me you will lose over this, for a location like that is 
worth money.” 

“So are cigars,” said Dobree, “but if I give a box of 
cigars to a friend he doesn’t complain that the gift is 

worth money. D-n money,” continued this money- 

grubber, “it’s worth nothing but the fun of making it— 
well, will you take your cigars, or shall I give the box to 
someone else?” 

Connart said no more. In three weeks’ time the 
Golden Gleam, which was lying at the wharves, had taken 
her cargo of all the multiudinous things that go by the 
286 



THE KING OF MALEKA 


name of “trade,” and one bright morning, tacking against 
the wind from the sea, she left the Golden Gate be¬ 
hind her. 

Mrs. Connart stood on deck, watching bald Tamalpais 
across the blue, scudding sea of the wake. 

When you go to the Pacific Islands you die to all the 
things you have known, but you are at least sure that you 
are going to heaven—if you avoid the low islands. 

Mrs. Connart knew the first fact. Down below in 
her cabin she carried with her the relics of the life she 
would no longer lead, down to a well-worn riding habit 
and a whip that would most likely never touch horse 
again, but she was not despondent, quite the reverse. 

You may be sea-sick in a Pacific schooner, bucking 
against the swell and bending to the north-west trades, 
you may be mutinous, or angry, or tipsy, but despondency, 
that low fever of cities and civilisation, has no place out 
there. 

“You ain’t feelin’ the sea, ma’am?” said Captain 
Bowlby, ranging up alongside of her. 

“No,” said she, “I’m a good sailor.” 

“I bet you are,” said the captain. 

Bowlby had a keen eye for ships and women. He had 
taken a liking to Mrs. Connart at first sight. She had a 
steady eye and sure smile that pleased him, and some days 
later, alone with Ambrose the mate, he voiced his opin¬ 
ions. 

“Looks like a mouse, don’t she? Well, there ain’t no 
mouse about her barring her look. She’s one of them 
quiet sorts that’d back-chat a congressman if she was put 
to it, or take a lion by the tail if it was makin’ for one of 
her kids. I bet she’s rudder and compass both to Con- 
287 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


nart. She and he fit as if they was welded. Did you ever 
take notice that there’s chaps you meet that’re only half 
men till they get a woman that fits them clapped on to 
them? If she don’t fit they go under the first beam sea 
they meet; if she do, weather won’t hurt them.” 

Ambrose concurred. He was a concurring individual, 
with few opinions of his own on any matters outside his 
trade. 

“I reckon you’re right,” said he, “though I don’t know 
much about women—I never had the time,” he finished, 
apologetically. 


2 

They raised Maleka at six o’clock one brilliant morn¬ 
ing, and by nine it had developed before them, mountain¬ 
ous and green, showing, through the glasses, the blowing 
foliage, torrent traces and the foam on the barrier reef. 

To Connart and his wife there seemed something 
miraculous in the unfolding of this island from the wastes 
of the blue and desolate sea. They had pictured this new 
home often in their minds, but they had pictured nothing 
like this. It had been waiting for them all their lives, and 
it seemed to them now that the souls of all the pleasant 
places they had ever seen or dreamed of were waiting to 
greet them on that summer-girdled reef. 

As they passed the break and entered the lagoon the 
true island beach of blinding white sand showed its 
curve lipped by the emerald waters, and through the fo¬ 
liage came glimpses of the white houses of the little town. 

“Look,” said Mrs. Connart, wide-eyed and drawing 
deep breaths as if to inhale the strangeness and beauty 
288 


THE KING OF MALEKA 


of the scene before her, “there are people on the beach, 
natives, and look at the canoes.” 

“There’s a boat pushing off,” said Connart, “and a big 
fellow in a striped suit in her.” 

“That’s Seedbaum,” said Captain Bowlby; “wonder 
what he wants, cornin’ to inspect—gin, likely.” 

The anchor fell, waking the echoes of the woods, and 
the Golden Gleam, swinging to the tide that was just be¬ 
ginning to steal out of the lagoon, lay with her nose point¬ 
ing to the beach whilst the boat came alongside, and the 
man in the striped suit scrambled on board. 

He was a big man, with bulging eyes, a shaved head, 
and feet encased in worn-out tennis shoes. The suit 
seemed made of flannelette. 

Mrs. Connart at first sight took a profound dislike to 
this individual. 

Seedbaum—for Seedbaum it was—saluted Bowlby, 
gave him good-day, cast his eye at the strangers and 
opened up. 

“I knew you before you made the anchorage,” said he, 
“dropped in for water, I suppose.” 

“No, I’ve water enough till I fetch Tomasu,” replied 
Bowlby, “I’ve brought some trade.” 

“Trade,” said Seedbaum, offering a cigar. “Well, I 
don’t mind taking some prints and knives off you at a 
reasonable price. I’m full up with canned goods and to¬ 
bacco, still—at a reasonable figure-” 

“The trade’s not mine,” said Bowlby, lighting the cigar. 
“It belongs to the new trader—that gentleman there, Mr. 
Connart’s his name, let me make you known. Mr. Con¬ 
nart, this is Mr. Seedbaum.” 

“Glad to make your acquaintance,” said Connart. 

289 



TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


Seedbaum, fingering an unlit cigar, stared at Connart. 

“Well, this gets me,” said he. “Why, Dobree cleared 
his last man out for good, there’s not business enough 
in this island for two—that’s flat—what’d he want send¬ 
ing you for?” 

“He didn’t send me,” replied Connart. 

“Then,” said Seedbaum, “what brought you here, any¬ 
way?” 

“I think,” said Mrs. Connart, “this ship brought us 
here—and, excuse me—do you own this island?” 

Seedbaum stared at her, then his glance fell before that 
quiet, unwavering gaze, and he turned to Bowlby. 

“Well,” said he, “it’s none of my affair if the whole 
continent of the States comes here to find copra—if it’s 
to be found—but it seems to me this is a pretty dry ship.” 

“Come down below,” said Bowlby. 

They went below and the pop of a beer-bottle cork fol¬ 
lowed upon their descent. 

“Oh, what a creature!” said Mrs. Connart. “George, 
why is it that humanity alone produces things like that?” 

“I don’t know,” said Connart, “but I wish humanity 
had not produced it here.” 

Seedbaum came on deck again mollified by beer. 
Despite the set-down he had received he nodded to the 
new-comers as he went over the side, and as they watched 
him being rowed ashore, Bowlby, leaning on the rail, spat 
into the water and spoke. 

“I didn’t much trouble tellin’ you of that chap on the 
way out,” said Bowlby. “There’s no use in meetin’ 
troubles half way, and there’s not an island in the hull 
Pacific you won’t find trouble of some sort in. If you 
go in for Pacific tradin’ there’s two things you have to 
290 


THE KING OF MALEKA 

face, cockroaches and men. I’ve kept the old Gleam pretty 
free of ’roaches by fumigatin’, but you can’t fumigate 
islands. If you could I reckon you’d see more rats with 
hands and feet takin’ to the water than’s ever been seen 
since the Ark discharged cargo. Seedbaum’d be one of 
them, but you have his measure now and you’ll know 
enough to go careful with him. Wiart, the last man that 
was here, got on all right with him. You see, they were 
pretty much of a pair, and it’s my belief they were hand 
in glove, as you might say, but I reckon you won’t have 
much use for a glove like that. Well, I’ll get you ashore 
now to see your house and I’ll help to fix it up for you. 
We’ll begin gettin’ the cargo ashore to-morrow.” 

He ordered a boat to be lowered and they rowed ashore. 

Never, not even in dreamland, had Mrs. Connart ex¬ 
perienced anything so strange as that stepping on shore 
from the bow of the boat run high and dry on the shelv¬ 
ing beach, never anything like the touch of land after the 
long, long weeks of seafaring, and the sights, the sounds, 
the perfumes all new, belonging to a new life to be lived 
in a new world. 

The white houses set in a little garden at the far end of 
the village pleased her as much as the place. Her house 
is almost as much as her husband to a woman, for, to a 
woman a house implies so much more than to a man. 
There are good houses and bad houses, crazy houses ex¬ 
hibiting the folly of their builders in stucco turrets or 
mad chimney pots, and stupid houses without character 
or proper sculleries and sinks. The house at Maleka, 
though small and possessing few rooms, was cheerful and 
had a pleasant personality of its own, but it did not pos¬ 
sess a stick of furniture. Mrs. Connart with the 
291 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


prescience of a woman and assisted by the advice of 
Bowlby, had brought with them from San Francisco 
articles of furniture not to be obtained in the islands, 
unless at a ruinous cost. Mats, cane chairs and ham¬ 
mocks could be obtained from the natives. All the same, 
there had been furniture in the house and it was gone. 
Dobree had given them a list of things and amongst them 
was an article on which Mrs. Connart had, woman-like, 
set her heart. “One red cedar chest, four foot six by 
three foot,” was its specification. 

“But who can have taken them?” said she, as they 
stood in the empty front room, after a tour of inspec¬ 
tion. “There was crockery ware, besides, and oh, ever so 
many things, and Mr. Dobree was so kind. He would not 
take a penny for them. You remember, George, he said: 
‘When I give a friend a box of cigars I don’t take the 
bands off them, whatever is there you can have’—and now 
there’s nothing!” 

“Maybe the Kanakas have taken them,” said Bowlby. 

“Or Seedbaum,” said Connart. 

“As like as not,” replied the captain. “He seems to 
look on the blessed place as his. He told me down in the 
cabin he reckoned he was king of Maleka, and that all 
the Kanakas jumped to his orders as if he was king. He’s 
got a clutch on the place, there’s no denying that, and he 
manages to keep missionaries away somehow or ’nother. 
I’m afraid you’re going to have trouble with that chap.” 

“I’m not afraid of him,” said Connart. “I’ve got a 
revolver and can use it if worst comes to the worst.” 

“Oh, it’s not revolvers I’m thinkin’ of,” said the cap¬ 
tain, “it’s trickery; he’d trick the devil out of his hoofs 
and then make gelatine of them, would Seedbaum; have 
292 


THE KING OF MALEKA 


no trade dealing with him; take my advice, just stick to 
the Kanakas.” 

“Let’s go and ask him, right now, if he knows where 
the things have gone to,’’ said Mrs. Connart. 

“Well, that’s not a bad idea,” said Bowlby. “He’s 
sure to lie; anyhow, it’ll clear matters.” 

Seedbaum’s house was a substantially built coral-lime- 
washed building, with a broad verandah in which hung a 
cage containing a parrot, the garden was neat and well- 
tended, and the whole place had an air of quiet prosperity, 
neatness and order, as though the better part of the own¬ 
er’s character were here exhibited for the general view. 

Seedbaum was seated on the verandah, reading a San 
Francisco paper obtained from Bowlby. 

Seeing them approach he rose to greet them. 

“I’ve come to ask you about the furniture in our 
house,” said Connart. “There were quite a lot of things 
left by the last man, and I have a list of them, but every¬ 
thing has gone, been taken away—do you know anything 
of the matter?” 

“I don’t know anything of what you call furniture,” 
said the other. “Wiart sold me his sticks when he left 
for fifty dollars, and a bad bargain it was.” 

“He sold you them?” 

“Yes.” 

“But they belonged to Mr. Dobree.” 

“Oh, did they; well, Dobree will have to dispute that 
with Wiart. Wiart said they were his.” 

“Have you his receipt?” 

“Lord, no, there was no receipt in the matter. I 
handed him over the dollars and he handed me over the 
rubbish. It was a favour to him.” 

293 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


“Was there a cedar-wood chest?” asked Mrs. Connart. 

“There was. It’s in my house now, there; you can see 
it through the door.” 

Through the open door which gave a view of the front 
room Mrs. Connart saw the object of her desire. It was 
a beauty, solid, moth-defying, with brass corners and 
brass handles. It was hers by all right, and Seedbaum 
had tricked her out of it. She spoke: 

“That chest is mine,” said she. “Mr. Dobree gave it 
to me, it was his property, and Mr. Wiart had no right 
to sell it.” 

“Well,” said Seedbaum, “he sold it, and if there’s any 
trouble over it it will be between Dobree and Wiart, and 
Wiart was going to Japan, so he said when he left here, 
so Dobree had better go to Japan and have it out with 
him.” 

Mrs. Connart turned. 

“Come,” said she to the others, “there is no use talk¬ 
ing any more to this person. I will write to Mr. Dobree.” 

They turned away and Seedbaum sat down again to 
read his newspaper. 

“That’s what I said,” spoke Bowlby. “Monkey tricks; 
you see how he’s placed; Wiart’s gone Lord knows where, 
and Pacific Coast law don’t run here. The way for you 
to do is to lay low and fetch him in the eye unexpected, 
somehow, though if you take my advice you’ll give him 
a wide offing. There’s no use in fightin’ with alligators; 
better leave them be. Hullo, what’s that?” 

They turned. 

Seedbaum had come out of the verandah. 

A passing native had drawn his ire for some reason 
or another, and the redoubtable Seedbaum was storming 
294 


THE KING OF MALEKA 


at him. Then he kicked the native, and the latter, a big, 
powerful man, turned and ran. 

“The coward!” said Mrs. Connart. 

“I expect that chap ain’t a coward,” said Bowlby. 
“He’s just ’feared of Seedbaum. I reckon there’re some 
curious things in nature. I’ve seen a whole ship’s com¬ 
pany livin’ in terror of a hazin’ captain. They could 
have hove him overboard and swore he fell over—for the 
after guard was as set against him as the fo’c’sle—but 
they didn’t. Just let themselves be driv’ like sheep and 
kicked like terriers. It’s the same with the Kanakas on 
this island, I expect.” 

“He’s got a personal ascendancy over them,” said Con¬ 
nart. 

“I reckon he’s got something like that,” said Captain 
Bowlby. 

3 

In a week they were settled down, and a few days later, 
the cargo having been landed and stored, the Golden 
Gleam took her departure. 

They went down to the beach to see her off; they 
watched her topsails vanish beyond the reef, and they 
returned, feeling very much alone in the world. A good 
man is warmth and light even to the souls of sinners. 
Captain Bowlby was illiterate; his language was free; 
he was not a saint, but he was a good, human man right 
through. The sea turns out characters like this just as 
she turns out shells. It is a pity that they have to cling 
to the ocean and the beaches; the cities want them. 

“I feel just as if I had lost a near relation,” said Mrs. 
Connart. 


295 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


“Well, we’ll have him back soon,” said her husband. 
“It’s up to us now to get the copra to give him a cargo.” 

Next morning the new trader began business by lay¬ 
ing out a selection of goods on the verandah of his store. 
Mrs. Connart, who knew something of the Polynesian 
dialects and who had the art of picking up unknown 
tongues, had already got in touch with the Kanakas; they 
charmed and pleased her, especially the children, and 
wherever she went she was greeted by friendly faces. It 
seemed to her that the population of this island, leaving 
out Seedbaum, her husband and herself, consisted entirely 
of children, children of different sizes and different ages, 
but children all the same. 

Returning that day from a long walk in the woods she 
found Connart smoking a pipe on the verandah of their 
house. He looked rather depressed. 

“I can’t make it out,” said he; “there’s no trade doing.” 

“Maybe they don’t know you have started in business 
yet.” 

“Oh, yes, they do; lots of them have passed and seen 
the store open; they’ve turned to look at the goods, and 
they seemed attracted, but they went on.” 

“Well, give them time,” said she. 

“Look,” said Connart, “there’s copra going to Seed- 
baum’s; they’re trading with him, right enough.” 

Mrs. Connart watched the copra bearers, but said 
nothing. 

In her heart she felt that Seedbaum was moving against 
them by some stealthy means. At first she thought that 
it might be possible he had worked upon the native mind 
and induced the Kanakas to put a taboo upon the new¬ 
comers, but she dismissed this idea at once. There was 
296 


THE KING OF MALEKA 

no taboo. The Kanakas were not a bit afraid of either 
her or her husband, on the contrary, there was every 
evidence of friendliness. 

“Well,” she said that night, when the store was closed 
for the day without a knife or a stick of tobacco changing 
hands, “there’s nothing to be done till we find out why 
they are acting so. It’s that creature, I am sure. He 
began by robbing me of my beautiful cedar-wood chest, 
and he’s going on to rob you of your chances in business. 
Well, let him beware. I’m Christian enough not to wish 
to hurt him, but I’m Christian enough to believe there’s 
a power that punishes the wicked, and he’s wicked. I 
knew him for a wicked man directly he came on board 
the ship.” 

“He keeps to himself, and that’s one good thing,” said 
Connart; “but I don’t see how he can stop the natives 
from trading with us.” 

“I don’t, either, but I know he does,” said she. 

The next day passed without business being done, and 
the next. 

“We may as well shut up shop, it seems to me,” said 
Connart. “How would it be if you spoke to some of 
these people and asked them what is the matter?” 

“I’ve thought of that,” said his wife, “and I held off 
because—because—oh, I don’t know, it seems sort of in¬ 
delicate to ask people why they don’t come to one’s store. 
I’ll do it to-morrow morning first thing. One mustn’t 
let one’s feelings stand in the way when one’s living is 
concerned.” 

“I wish we had never come here,” said he, “for your 
sake.” 

“Never come here?” she cried. “Why, I wouldn’t for 
297 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


the earth have gone anywhere else! I love the place and 
I love people, and what are difficulties ? Why, difficulties 
are the main excitement in life. If life wasn’t an ob¬ 
stacle race, it would be a very flat affair. George, we 
have got to beat that man, and I’m going to, you wait 
and see.” 

He kissed her and blessed her, and they sat down that 
night to a game of cribbage, Seedbaum and the wickedness 
of the world forgotten. 

Next morning after breakfast Mrs. Connart went out. 
She passed through the village and on to the beach, bril¬ 
liant in the morning light, breeze-blown and filled with 
the murmurs of the reef; some natives were pulling in a 
net and she watched them, chatting to them and playing 
with the children who had come down to secure the little 
fish. Then she had a talk with a woman who was stand¬ 
ing by, a woman dark and straight as an arrow, a woman 
mild-eyed and with a voice sweet as the sound of run¬ 
ning water. 

Leaving her, Mrs. Connart passed to a man who was 
engaged in mending an outrigger of one of the canoes 
hauled up on the beach; she had a talk with him. 

Then she returned, walking slowly and thoughtfully 
to the house, where she found her husband. 

“George,” said she. “I am right. It is that Creature. 
The people hate him, but they are afraid of him. It seems 
absolutely absurd, but it is so. He holds them in a spell. 
He kicks them and beats them, but they are not afraid 
of that. It’s just him.” 

“Good Lord,” said Connart, “why on earth don’t they 
rise against him, and tell him to go to the devil; he’s only 
one man, anyway.” 


298 


THE KING OF MALEKA 

“I don’t know,” said she. “It’s a mystery of human 
nature. He’s the tyrant type, and it’s always been the 
same in the world; there’s some sort of magnetism in that 
type that keeps folk under. History is full of that. It’s 
the soft man and the kindly man and the good man that’s 
assassinated, but tyrants seem to go free. He’s what 
he said he was, the king of this place—well, we must see 
what we can do to pull him from his throne. I wish there 
were more whites here.” 

“That’s the bother,” said Connart. 

Next morning they found a basket of fruit on their 
verandah, a gift from some unknown person. It was as 
though the Kanakas, afraid to show their sympathy and 
friendliness openly for the strangers, had done it in this 
manner. But no one came to trade. 

That night two chickens, some sweet potatoes and 
another basket of fruit were deposited in the same place. 

“And we can’t thank them,” said Mrs. Connart; “but I 
believe these haven’t all come from one person. I think 
it’s everyone here—they all like us. Oh, George, isn’t it 
maddening that we can’t have them openly our friends, 
just because of that Beast!” 

“It is,” said George. 

Now at eleven o’clock that morning, Mrs. Connart, 
seated on the verandah and engaged on some needle-work, 
noticed a little native girl, who, pausing at the garden 
gate and seeming undecided, at last picked up courage, 
opened the gate and came towards the house. 

Connart was in the house, going over some accounts, 
when his wife ran in to him. 

“George, come at once,” cried she; “such a dreadful 
thing—they’ve risen against Seedbaum and they are kill- 
299 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


ing him somewhere in the woods, and they want us to 
go and see!” 

“Good Lord!” cried he, “killing him! Want us to go 
and see! Are they mad ?” 

He picked up his hat and came out on the verandah, 
where the pretty little native girl was waiting, a flower 
of the scarlet hibiscus in her hair and calm contentment 
in her eyes. 

“I can’t quite make out all she says,” said Mrs. Con- 
nart; “but I can make out her meaning.” 

“You’d better stay here,” said he, “whilst I go; there 
may be trouble.” 

“I am not afraid,” she replied. “Come on, we may be 
too late.” 

They followed the child. 

“Tell her to hurry,” said Connart. 

“She says we need not hurry,” replied she; “as far as 
I can make out they are only going to kill him—I expect 
they have him a prisoner somewhere; well, much as I 
hate him, I am glad we will be able to save him.” 

“That depends on how the natives take it,” said he. 

The child led them from the road by a path trod by the 
copra gatherers, a path running through the wonderland 
of the woods, a green gloom where the soaring palms shot 
upwards through a twilight roofed with moving shadows 
and sun sparkles 

They reached a glade where a number of natives were 
seated in a circle above them and swinging by a cord 
from two trees was hanging a little disk about half the 
size of a tambourine; the disk was made of cane, and so 
constructed as to leave a small hole in the centre. An old 
native woman seated under the disk was clapping her 
300 


THE KING OF MALEKA 


hands and repeating something that sounded like an in¬ 
cantation. Every pair of eyes in the whole of that as¬ 
sembly was fixed upon the disk. 

The child whispered something to Mrs. Connart. Then 
she turned from the child and whispered to her husband. 

"It’s only witchcraft. That’s a soul trap. They are 
waiting for a fly to pass through the hole in that thing. 
If it does, then Seedbaum will die.” 

“Good heavens,” murmured Connart, with a half-laugh. 
“Why, the fellow hasn’t any soul—not enough to furnish 
out a fly.” 

They watched patiently for ten minutes. There were 
plenty of flies; they rested on the little tambourine, 
crawled round its edge, but not one went through the 
hole. 

“Come,” whispered Connart. 

They withdrew, taking the path back. 

“It’s pathetic,” murmured she. 

“It’s damned foolishness,” he repeated. “They trade 
with him, and let him kick them, and then go on with 
that nonsense. If they refused him copra, they would 
bring him to his senses quick enough.” 

“Anyhow they hate him,” said she. 

“Much good that is,” he replied. 

4 

Now it came about that the soul trap—turning out a 
dead failure, since not a single fly went through the hole 
—instead of destroying Seedbaum, fixed him on a ped¬ 
estal more secure than that which he had hitherto oc¬ 
cupied. 


301 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


He was indestructible, and the power which he exer¬ 
cised over the native mind threatened to be as indestruc¬ 
tible as himself. 

However, vengeance was coming. Retribution for all 
the wrongs he had committed, his swindlings, brutalities 
and beatings. 

It came in this wise: 

One afternoon Mrs. Connart, seated on the verandah 
and reading The Moths of the Limberlost, heard the cries 
of a child. 

Right in front of the house, King Seedbaum was beat¬ 
ing a native child for some fault or fancied disrespect 
towards his royal highness, cuffing it and cuffing it, whilst 
the squeals of the cuffed one affronted the heavens and 
the ears of all listeners. 

Now, to touch a child or dog or cat in Mrs. Connart’s 
presence was to raise a devil. White as death she rushed 
into the house and white as death she rushed out again. 
She held her riding-whip, a Mexican quirt, ladies’ size, 
but horribly efficient in energetic hands. 

Seedbaum saw her coming, couldn’t understand, caught 
the first lash on his right arm and along his back—he 
was wearing the pyjama suit—and his yell brought the 
village flocking and Connart running from a field where 
he was laying out some plants. 

He saw the quirt lashing over Seedbaum’s shoulder, 
across his legs, and across the back, for the King 
of Maleka was now running, running and pursued for 
ten yards or so whilst the quirt got one last blow 
in. 

Then he had his wife in his arms, and she was weeping. 

“Did he touch you?” cried Connart. 

302 


THE KING OF MALEKA 

“No—it was a child/’ she gasped. “Beast! Look, he 
has run into his house.” 

The street was filled with a crowd that all through the 
beating had remained spell-bound. Now it broke up into 
knots and small parties, all talking together excitedly. 

Connart, with his arm around his wife, drew her into 
the house. 

She sat down on a couch and laughed and sobbed. She 
was half hysterical, but not for long. 

“I couldn’t help it,” she said. “I would do it again. 
It’s not because of us—but because he was beating a 
child.” 

“Brute!” said Connart. “I’ll go down now and give 
him more. I want to have it out with him right now.” 
He turned to the door. She caught him. 

“No,” she cried, “he’s had enough. He won’t do it 
again. Listen, what’s that ?” 

From away in the direction of Seedbaum’s house came 
a sound like the swarming of angry bees, also shouts. 

They rushed to the door and saw Seedbaum. Seed- 
baum with fifty people round him, and every person try¬ 
ing to beat him at the same time. 

“Good God,” said Connart, “you’ve taught them the 
trick—they’ll kill him.” 

“He’s got away,” cried Mrs. Connart. 

Seedbaum, breaking from the crowd, was making up 
the street, the whole village was after him; he passed the 
Connarts’ house and headed for the woods where he dis¬ 
appeared. Then his pursuers drew off, and, rushing to 
the house of Connart, swarmed at the railings, shouting 
and waving and laughing, whilst Mrs. Connart in¬ 
terpreted. 


303 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


“They say he’ll never come back to the village again,” 
said she, “for they’ll kill him if he does; that he’ll have to 
live in the woods. Oh, George! I’m frightened—what 
will be the end of it all?” 

The end was a whale ship that came into the lagoon. 
Seedbaum, living in the woods and supported by the 
generosity of the Connarts, was given notice by the three 
chiefs of the island, Matua, Tamura and Ratupea by name, 
that if he did not go away in the whale ship he would be 
killed before the next ship arrived. And he went. 

He was almost friendly with the Connarts, in return 
for their food and protection, at the last, and as the 
natives would allow him to take nothing with him, he 
had to leave everything behind him, including the red 
cedar-wood chest, which thus came back to its rightful 
owner. 

He did not even threaten the natives with govern¬ 
mental retribution; he knew he was done and placed out 
of court by his own conduct. 

But the thing that always remained with Connart out 
of this affair was the fact that a population of active and 
vigorous people would still have been down-trodden by 
a merciless tyrant but for a little, quiet, calm-eyed woman, 
who had unconsciously and just from an uprising of her 
own spirit, “shown them the trick.” 

Spirit—after all, what else is there in the world beside 
it? 


ALLELUIA 

By T. F. POWYS 

F OLLOW me into one of those shining days of 
April, when the blue in the sky has lost its March 
iciness and the village of Wallbridge pauses in 
its usual grey monotony to look for events. 

Events come indeed, as they always do, for those who 
wait long enough for them. The first intimation that 
something was going to happen chanced to be picked 
up in the road by Mr. Tapper, labourer of Ford’s 
Farm. 

Mr. Tapper had once found a penny in the mud, and 
ever since that eventful day the good man had kept his 
eye fixed upon the road when he walked abroad. 

Mr. Tapper handed the paper he had found when tea- 
time came round to his daughter Lily, remarking as he 
did so: 

“ ’Tain’t nothink,” which merely meant, of course, that 
the paper wasn’t a penny. 

Lily—the pretty Lily—gave her head a little shake, 
and read at the top of the printed sheet the word 
“Alleluia.” 

It was all out then, of course, as soon as the pretty 
Lily had got hold of it, all the whole merry matter of the 
coming of Alleluia into Wallbridge. After he had handed 
in those papers at the doors—with the exception of the 
ones that he wisely dropped in the road, well knowing 
305 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


that anything picked up always interests—invited everyone 
to his meetings, Alleluia for he must have known everyone 
would call him Alleluia, began to preach and sing in a 
devout manner in the handsome tent that he had set up 
near to his van. He was so gentle and polite and so good 
at starting those emotional tunes—invented by Mr. 
Moody—that Wallbridge at once praised and patronised 
him. 

Alleluia had come down from Oxford, and his confid¬ 
ing and childlike look, together with his silky moustache, 
had led him into the bypaths and hedges and so on and 
on until he reached the village of Wallbridge. 

There were, of course, troubles in even so gentle a 
young man’s path; there were difficulties and doubts— 
little worries—so that Alleluia’s eyes were not always 
.without their tears. 

The Wallbridge people were not always so loving as 
they should be. The Rev. John Sutton, the vicar, dis¬ 
approved of the preacher’s looks and was even slightly 
contemptuous of the glory hymns. This unkindness hit 
the young man hard, because, outwardly, the vicar seemed 
pleased with the work that he was doing. 

And there was Lily. Lily had to be considered even 
by Mr. Tapper, her father, as something female. Mr. 
Tapper put her down entirely, with her mother included, 
to the simple fact that he had stayed too long out one 
lovely June fair day at the Stickland revels. Even that 
day he saw as all Lily’s fault, feeling, truly perhaps, that 
the child brings her parents together. 

Even then Mr. Tapper was middle-aged, but that only 
made him blame Lily the more. If it had not been for 
Lily, Mr. Tapper might have gone on hawking saucepan 
306 


ALLELUIA 


lids and receiving beer in exchange for the country mat¬ 
ters in his tavern songs. 

When Lily was eighteen a very important event hap¬ 
pened to her. She bought a new looking-glass to replace 
a cracked one that had always given her face such an 
ugly cut down the middle. Before this new one—she 
had stolen the money for it from her drunken parent’s 
pocket—she could touch herself and preen herself, and 
wonder at a red mark on her bosom that looked almost 
like a bite. 

That must not happen again; of course it wouldn’t 
after Alleluia’s preaching; young Wakely would have to 
take her home more gently in future. Following the 
lovely hymns, it was not quite proper to be covered and 
eaten and bitten by kisses all the way home. 

“No you mustn’t, Tom.” 

Pretty Lily said the words before her glass in order to 
practise them. She used to sit quite near to the young 
preacher, and had got his child’s look and his silky upper 
lip quite by heart. He would be always speaking about 
love and about doing kind actions to one another, and 
every hymn was filled with the delicious savour of sub¬ 
dued sin. 

Lily was quite moved by all the excitement, but she 
wished to be more careful about Tom, and so she 
was. . . . 

Alleluia had grown fond of looking upwards too, and 
for many nights he had seen only one face in the sky. 
Alleluia was forced to allow that the pretty face in the 
sky had nothing whatever to do with the hymns he had 
been singing; he knew it was not God’s face, nor David’s, 
nor any other heavenly person’s. But, alas, it so pleased 
307 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


Alleluia that he wandered abroad in search of it some¬ 
times, and often it was midnight before the preacher 
opened his van door to go to bed. 

The excessive longing for events to happen in a vil¬ 
lage sometimes over-reaches itself; it did, indeed, over¬ 
teach itself this time in Wallbridge. 

As usual, events pass in a sober grey way in the coun¬ 
try. The dismal sermons of all the Rev. John Suttons 
are nearly aways of the same dismal colour. And even 
the Wallbridge quarrel between old Mother Wimple and 
Farmer Told had become dull coloured, too. The sun 
shone as best it could, and sometimes the moon would 
appear, though none of these heavenly lights proved 
strong enough to break the leaden colouring. 

But the people had longed, and when the people long 
something happens. 

It came in this wise. A morning dawned with a splash 
of red, that splashed the grey sod, that splashed the hills 
and the meadows, and even gave to Farmer Told’s white 
cow a red blood-stained look. 

Her hymn-book soaked, her pretty Sunday clothes so 
sadly torn, her pretty lily face rudely beaten and broken: 
there was quite a little pool of blood in the chalk-pit, the 
grey colour lurid for once. 

This was more than peaceful Wallbridge had wished 
for. This dreadful dash of red made even the April 
sunshine look a little queer. It could never be the same 
usual Wallbridge wind that blew upon the stalwart forms 
of the inspectors and policemen who had the case in 
hand. 

Alleluia had been found, almost crazed, near the chalk- 
308 


ALLELUIA 


pit; he had been looking for pretty Lily all night, he said, 
and had only found her at dawn. There was blood upon 
his clothes, he had held her body in his arms. 

Others told so much, too. They had been seen to¬ 
gether very often; they had been followed, watched, and 
the stars needs must have blushed, so folks said. Tom 
Wakely had been away that red night, so it could not 
have been he who had done it. 

Honest Mr. Tapper gave the strongest evidence, and 
Alleluia was hanged. 

Perhaps this was a little hard upon Alleluia, but all 
men said he should have stuck to his hymn-singing and 
not gone out to look for pretty lilies at night-time. One 
wit even remarked that he could have sung his hymns in 
the town in a cheaper fashion without a stretch of the 
neck at the end of it. 

The red splash of pretty Lily’s blood coloured some 
dozen or so years of Wallbridge life, but after that time 
was passed the old grey began to hang heavy again and 
an owl hooted. 

The owl must have settled upon Mr. Tapper’s chim¬ 
ney, so near did the sound of its hooting seem to Mr. 
Tapper. 

It was midnight, two old women—one was Mrs. 
Tapper—were sitting by the dying man’s side. 

“ ’E do die ’ard,” Mrs. Tapper remarked in a friendly 
tone. 

Mr. Tapper was thoughtful. 

“If only he hadn’t wandered off into the lanes on that 
fair day in June! He might even have been drinking 
beer instead of dying hard.” 

The owl perched upon the cottage chimney hooted 
309 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


again. The ice upon Ford’s pond cracked—the midnight 
frost was abroad. 

Mr. Tapper spoke his last words. 

“Our Lily, she weren’t murdered by thik young 
preacher,” said Mr. Tapper. 

“Who did kill she?” the old women whispered ex¬ 
citedly. 

“ ’Twas I,” said Mr. Tapper, “because young Wakely 
never give I thik beer ’e’d promised. I did blame she 
for it.” 

The owl hooted, the old women looked at one an¬ 
other—and Mr. Tapper’s jaw slowly dropped. 


THE MONKEYS PAW 

By W. W. JACOBS 


I 

W ITHOUT, the night was cold and wet, but in 
the small parlour of Laburnam Villa the blinds 
were drawn and the fire burned brightly. 
Father and son were at chess, the former, who possessed 
ideas about the game involving radical changes, putting 
his king into such sharp and unnecessary perils that it 
even provoked comment from the white-haired old lady 
knitting placidly by the fire. 

“Hark at the wind,” said Mr. White, who, having 
seen a fatal mistake after it was too late, was amiably de¬ 
sirous of preventing his son from seeing it. 

“I’m listening,” said the latter, grimly surveying the 
board as he stretched out his hand. “Check.” 

“I should hardly think that he’d come to-night,” said 
his father, with his hand poised over the board. 

“Mate,” replied the son. 

“That’s the worst of living so far out,” bawled Mr. 
White, with sudden and unlooked-for violence; “of all 
the beastly, slushy, out-of-the-way places to live in, this 
is the worst. Pathway’s a bog, and the road’s a torrent. 
I don’t know what people are thinking about. I suppose 
because only two houses in the road are let, they think it 
doesn’t matter.” 

From The Lady of the Barge, by W. W. Jacobs. Copyright, 1902, 

by Dodd, Mead and Company. 

311 



TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


'‘Never mind, dear,” said his wife, soothingly; “per¬ 
haps you’ll win the next one.” 

Mr. White looked up sharply, just in time to intercept 
a knowing glance between mother and son. The words 
died away on his lips, and he hid a guilty grin in his thin 
grey beard. 

“There he is,” said Herbert White, as the gate banged 
to loudly and heavy footsteps came toward the door. 

The old man rose with hospitable haste, and opening 
the door, was heard condoling with the new arrival. The 
new arrival also condoled with himself so that Mrs. 
White said, “Tut tut!” and coughed gently as her hus¬ 
band entered the room, followed by a tall, burly man, 
beady of eye and rubicund of visage. 

“Sergeant-Major Morris,” he said, introducing him. 

The sergeant-major shook hands, and taking the prof¬ 
fered seat by the fire, watched contentedly while his 
host got out whiskey and tumblers and stood a small 
copper kettle on the fire. 

At the third glass his eyes got brighter, and he began 
to talk, the little family circle regarding with eager in¬ 
terest this visitor from distant parts, as he squared his 
broad shoulders in the chair and spoke of wild scenes and 
doughty deeds; of wars and plagues and strange peoples. 

“Twenty-one years of it,” said Mr. White, nodding 
at his wife and son. “When he went away he was a 
slip of a youth in the warehouse. Now look at him.” 

“He don’t look to have taken much harm,” said Mrs. 
White, politely. 

“I’d like to go to India myself,” said the old man, 
“just to look round a bit, you know.” 

“Better where you are,” said the sergeant-major, shak- 
312 


THE MONKEY’S PAW 


ing his head. He put down the empty glass, and sighing 
softly, shook it again. 

“I should like to see those old temples and fakirs and 
jugglers,” said the old man. “What was that you started 
telling me the other day about a monkey’s paw or some¬ 
thing, Morris?” 

“Nothing,” said the soldier, hastily. “Leastways, noth¬ 
ing worth hearing.” 

“Monkey’s paw?” said Mrs. White, curiously. 

“Well, it’s just a bit of what you might call magic, 
perhaps,” said the sergeant-major, off-handedly. 

His three listeners leaned forward eagerly. The visitor 
absent-mindedly put his empty glass to his lips and then 
set it down again. His host filled it for him. 

“To look at,” said the sergeant-major, fumbling in his 
pocket, “it’s just an ordinary little paw, dried to a 
mummy.” 

He took something out of his pocket and proffered it. 
Mrs. White drew back with a grimace, but her son, taking 
it, examined it curiously. 

“And what is there special about it?” inquired Mr. 
White as he took it from his son, and having examined 
it, placed it upon the table. 

“It had a spell put on it by an old fakir,” said the ser¬ 
geant-major, “a very holy man. He wanted to show that 
fate ruled people’s lives, and that those who interfered 
with it did so to their sorrow. He put a spell on it so that 
three separate men could each have three wishes from it. 

His manner was so impressive that his hearers were 
conscious that their light laughter jarred somewhat. 

“Well, why don’t you have three, sir?” said Herbert 
White, cleverly. 


313 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


The soldier regarded him in the way that middle-age 
is wont to regard presumptuous youth. “I have,” he said, 
quietly, and his blotchy face whitened. 

“And did you really have the three wishes granted?” 
asked Mrs. White. 

“I did,” said the sergeant-major, and his glass tapped 
against his strong teeth. 

“And has anybody else wished?” persisted the old 
lady. 

“The first man had his three wishes. Yes,” was the 
reply; “I don’t know what the first two were, but the 
third was for death. That’s how I got the paw.” 

His tones were so grave that a hush fell upon the 
group. 

“If you’ve had your three wishes, it’s no good to you 
now, then, Morris,” said the old man at last. “What do 
you keep it for?” 

The soldier shook his head. “Fancy, I suppose,” he 
said, slowly. “I did have some idea of selling it, but I 
don’t think I will. It has caused enough mischief al¬ 
ready. Besides, people won’t buy. They think it’s a 
fairy tale; some of them, and those who do think any¬ 
thing of it want to try it first and pay me afterward.” 

“If you could have another three wishes,” said the 
old man, eyeing him keenly, “would you have them?” 

“I don’t know,” said the other. “I don’t know.” 

He took the paw, and dangling it between his fore¬ 
finger and thumb, suddenly threw it upon the fire. White, 
with a slight cry, stooped down and snatched it off. 

“Better let it burn,” said the soldier, solemnly. 

“If you don’t want it, Morris,” said the other, “give it 
to me.” 


3H 


THE MONKEY S PAW 

“I won’t,” said his friend doggedly. “I threw it on 
the fire. If you keep it, don’t blame me for what happens. 
Pitch it on the fire again like a sensible man.” 

The other shook his head and examined his new pos¬ 
session closely. “How do you do it?” he inquired. 

“Hold it up in your right hand and wish aloud,” said 
the sergeant-major, “but I warn you of the consequences.” 

“Sounds like the Arabian Nights,” said Mrs. White, 
as she rose and began to set the supper. “Don’t 
you think you might wish for four pairs of hands for 
me ?” 

Her husband drew the talisman from pocket, and then 
all three burst into laughter as the sergeant-major, with 
a look of alarm on his face, caught him by the arm. 

“If you must wish,” he said gruffly, “wish for some¬ 
thing sensible.” 

Mr. White dropped it back in his pocket, and placing 
chairs, motioned his friend to the table. In the business 
of supper the talisman was partly forgotten, and after¬ 
ward the three sat listening in an enthralled fashion to 
a second instalment of the soldier’s adventures in India. 

“If the tale about the monkey’s paw is not more truth¬ 
ful than those he has been telling us,” said Herbert, as 
the door closed behind the guest, just in time for him to 
catch the last train, “we shan’t make much out of it.” 

“Did you give him anything for it, father?” inquired 
Mrs. White, regarding her husband closely. 

“A trifle,” said he, colouring slightly. “He didn’t 
want it, but I made him take it. And he pressed me 
again to throw it away.” 

“Likely,” said Herbert, with pretended horror. “Why, 
we’re going to be rich, and famous and happy. Wish to 
315 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


be an emperor, father, to begin with; then you can’t be 
henpecked.” 

He darted round the table, pursued by the maligned 
Mrs. White armed with an antimacassar. 

Mr. White took the paw from his pocket and eyed it 
dubiously. “I don’t know what to wish for, and that’s 
a fact,” he said, slowly. “It seems to me I’ve got all I 
want.” 

“If you only cleared the house, you’d be quite happy, 
wouldn’t you?” said Herbert, with his hand on his shoul¬ 
der. “Well, wish for two hundred pounds then; that’ll 
just do it.” 

His father, smiling shamefacedly at his own credulity, 
held up the talisman, as his son, with a solemn face, 
somewhat marred by a wink at his mother, sat down at 
the piano and struck a few impressive chords. 

“I wish for two hundred pounds,” said the old man 
distinctly. 

A fine crash from the piano greeted the words, inter¬ 
rupted by a shuddering cry from the old man. His wife 
and son ran toward him. 

“It moved,” he cried, with a glance of disgust at the 
object as it lay on the floor. “As I wished, it twisted in 
my hand like a snake.” 

“Well, I don’t see the money,” said his son as he 
picked it up and placed it on the table, “and I bet I never 
shall.” 

“It must have been your fancy, father,” said his wife, 
regarding him anxiously. 

He shook his head. “Never mind, though; there’s no 
harm done, but it gave me a shock all the same.” 

They sat down by the fire again while the two men 
316 


THE MONKEY’S PAW 

finished their pipes. Outside, the wind was higher than 
ever, and the old man started nervously at the sound of 
a door banging upstairs. A silence unusual and depress¬ 
ing settled upon all three, which lasted until the old 
couple rose to retire for the night. 

“I expect you’ll find the cash tied up in a big bag in 
the middle of your bed,” said Herbert, as he bade them 
good-night, “and something horrible squatting up on top 
of the wardrobe watching you as you pocket your ill- 
gotten gains.” 

He sat alone in the darkness, gazing at the dying fire, 
and seeing faces in it. The last face was so horrible and 
so simian that he gazed at it in amazement. It got so 
vivid that, with a little uneasy laugh, he felt on the table 
for a glass containing a little water to throw over it. 
His hand grasped the monkey’s paw, and with a little 
shiver he wiped his hand on his coat and went up to bed. 

2 

In the brightness of the wintry sun next morning as it 
streamed over the breakfast table he laughed at his fears. 
There was an air of prosaic wholesomeness about the 
room which it had lacked on the previous night, and 
the dirty, shrivelled little paw was pitched on the side¬ 
board and with a carelessness which betokened no great 
belief in its virtues. 

“I suppose all old soldiers are the same,” said Mrs. 
White. “The idea of our listening to such nonsense! 
How could wishes be granted in these days? And if 
they could, how could two hundred pounds hurt you, 
father?” 


317 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


“Might drop on his head from the sky,” said the frivo¬ 
lous Herbert. 

“Morris said the things happened so naturally,” said 
his father, “that you might if you so wished attribute it 
to coincidence.” 

“Well, don’t break into the money before I come 
back,” said Herbert as he rose from the table. “I’m afraid 
it’ll turn you into a mean, avaricious man, and we shall 
have to disown you.” 

His mother laughed, and following him to the door, 
watched him down the road; and returning to the break¬ 
fast table, was very happy at the expense of her hus¬ 
band’s credulity. All of which did not prevent her from 
scurrying to the door at the postman’s knock, nor pre¬ 
vent her from referring somewhat shortly to retired 
sergeant-majors of bibulous habits when she found that 
the post brought a tailor’s bill. 

“Herbert will have some more of his funny remarks, 
I expect, when he comes home,” she said, as they sat at 
dinner. 

“I dare say,” said Mr. White, pouring himself out 
some beer; “but for all that, the thing moved in my 
hand; that I’ll swear to.” 

“You thought it did,” said the old lady soothingly. 

“I say it did,” replied the other. “There was no 
thought about it; I had just- What’s the matter?” 

His wife made no reply. She was watching the mys¬ 
terious movements of a man outside, who, peering in an 
undecided fashion at the house, appeared to be trying to 
make up his mind to enter. In mental connection with 
the two hundred pounds, she noticed that the stranger 
was well dressed, and wore a silk hat of glossy newness. 

3i8 



THE MONKEY S PAW 


Three times he paused at the gate, and then walked on 
again. The fourth time he stood with his hand upon it, 
and then with sudden resolution flung it open and walked 
up the path. Mrs. White at the same moment placed her 
hands behind her, and hurriedly unfastening the strings 
of her apron, put that useful article of apparel beneath 
the cushion of her chair. 

She brought the stranger, who seemed ill at ease, into 
the room. He gazed at her furtively, and listened in a 
preoccupied fashion as the old lady apologised for the 
appearance of the room, and her husband’s coat, a gar¬ 
ment which he usually reserved for the garden. She 
then waited as patiently as her sex would permit, for 
him to broach his business, but he was at first strangely 
silent. 

“I—was asked to call,” he said at last, and stooped 
and picked a piece of cotton from his trousers. “I come 
from ‘Maw and Meggins.’ ” 

The old lady started. “Is anything the matter?” she 
asked, breathlessly. “Has anything happened to Herbert ? 
What is it? What is it?” 

Her husband interposed. “There, there, mother,” he 
said, hastily. “Sit down, and don’t jump to conclusions. 
You’ve not brought bad news, I’m sure, sir;” and he 
eyed the other wistfully. 

“I’m sorry-” began the visitor. 

“Is he hurt?” demanded the mother, wildly. 

The visitor bowed in assent. “Badly hurt,” he said, 
quietly, “but he is not in any pain.” 

“Oh, thank God!” said the old woman, clasping her 
hands. “Thank God for that! Thank-” 

She broke off suddenly as the sinister meaning of the 
319 



TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


assurance dawned upon her, and she saw the awful con¬ 
firmation of her fears in the other’s averted face. She 
caught her breath, and turning to her slow-witted hus¬ 
band, laid her trembling old hand upon his. There was 
a long silence. 

“He was caught in the machinery,” said the visitor at 
length in a low voice. 

“Caught in the machinery,” repeated Mr. White, in a 
dazed fashion, “yes.” 

He sat staring blankly out at the window, and taking 
his wife’s hand between his own, pressed it as he had 
been wont to do in their old courting-days nearly forty 
years before. 

“He was the only one left to us,” he said, turning 
gently to the visitor. “It is hard.” 

The other coughed, and rising, walked slowly to the 
window. “The firm wished me to convey their sincere 
sympathy with you in your great loss,” he said, without 
looking around. “I beg that you will understand I am 
only their servant and merely obeying orders.” 

There was no reply; the old woman’s face was white, 
her eyes staring, and her breath inaudible; on the hus¬ 
band’s face was a look such as his friend the sergeant 
might have carried into his first action. 

“I was to say that Maw and Meggins disclaim all re¬ 
sponsibility,” continued the other. “They admit no lia¬ 
bility at all, but in consideration of your son’s services, 
they wish to present you with a certain sum as compen¬ 
sation.” 

Mr. White dropped his wife’s hand, and rising to his 
feet, gazed with a look of horror at his visitor. His dry 
lips shaped the words. “How much?” 

320 


THE MONKEY’S PAW 


“Two hundred pounds,” was the answer. 

Unconscious of his wife’s shriek, the old man smiled 
faintly, put out his hands like a sightless man, and 
dropped, a senseless heap, to the floor. 

3 

In the huge new cemetery, some two miles distant, the 
old people buried their dead, and came back to a house 
steeped in shadow and silence. It was all over so quickly 
that at first they could hardly realise it, and remained 
in a state of expectation as though of something else to 
happen—something else which was to lighten this load, 
too heavy for old hearts to bear. 

But the days passed, and expectation gave place to 
resignation—the hopeless resignation of the old, some¬ 
times miscalled, apathy. Sometimes they hardly ex¬ 
changed a word, for now they had nothing to talk about, 
and their days were long to weariness. It was about a 
week after that the old man, waking suddenly in the 
night, stretched out his hand and found himself alone. 
The room was in darkness, and the sound of subdued 
weeping came from the window. He raised himself in 
bed and listened. 

“Come back,” he said, tenderly. “You will be cold.” 

“It is colder for my son,” said the old woman, and 
wept afresh. 

The sound of her sobs died away on his ears. The 
bed was warm, and his eyes heavy with sleep. He dozed 
fitfully, and then slept until a sudden wild cry from his 
wife awoke him with a start. 

“The paw!” she cried wildly. “The monkey’s paw!” 
3 21 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 

He started up in alarm. “Where? Where is it? 
What’s the matter?” 

She came stumbling across the room toward him. “I 
want it,” she said, quietly. “You’ve not destroyed it?” 

“It’s in the parlour, on the bracket,” he replied, mar¬ 
velling. “Why?” 

She cried and laughed together, and bending over, 
kissed his cheek. 

“I only just thought of it,” she said, hysterically. 
“Why didn’t I think of it before? Why didn’t you think 
of it?” 

“Think of what?” he questioned. 

“The other two wishes,” she replied, rapidly. “We’ve 
only had one.” 

“Was not that enough?” he demanded, fiercely. 

“No,” she cried, triumphantly; “we’ll have one more. 
Go down and get it quickly, and wish our boy alive 
again.” 

The man sat up in bed and flung the bed-clothes from 
his quaking limbs. “Good God, you are mad!” he cried, 
aghast. 

“Get it,” she panted; “get it quickly, and wish- 

Oh, my boy, my boy!” 

Her husband struck a match and lit the candle. “Get 
back to bed,” he said, unsteadily. “You don’t know 
what you are saying.” 

“We had the first wish granted,” said the old woman, 
feverishly; “why not the second?” 

“A coincidence,” stammered the old man. 

“Go and get it and wish,” cried his wife, quivering 
with excitement. 

The old man turned and regarded her, and his voice 
322 



THE MONKEY S PAW 

shook. “He has been dead ten days, and besides he—I 
would not tell you else, but—I could only recognise him 
by his clothing. If he was too terrible for you to see 
then, how now?” 

“Bring him back,” cried the old woman, and dragged 
him toward the door. “Do you think I fear the child 
I have nursed?” 

He went down in the darkness, and felt his way to 
the parlour, and then to the mantelpiece. The talisman 
was in its place, and a horrible fear that the unspoken 
wish might bring his mutilated son before him ere he 
could escape from the room seized upon him, and he 
caught his breath as he found that he had lost the di¬ 
rection of the door. His brow cold with sweat, he felt 
his way round the table, and groped along the wall until 
he found himself in the small passage with the unwhole¬ 
some thing in his hand. 

Even his wife’s face seemed changed as he entered the 
room. It was white and expectant, and to his fears 
seemed to have an unnatural look upon it. He was afraid 
of her. 

“Wish!” she cried, in a strong voice. 

“It is foolish and wicked,” he faltered. 

“Wish!” repeated his wife. 

He raised his hand. “I wish my son alive again.” 

The talisman fell to the floor, and he regarded it fear¬ 
fully. Then he sank trembling into a chair as the old 
woman, with burning eyes, walked to the window and 
raised the blind. 

He sat until he was chilled with the cold, glancing occa¬ 
sionally at the figure of the old woman peering through 
the window. The candle-end, which had burned below 
323 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


the rim of the china candlestick, was throwing pulsating 
shadows on the ceiling and walls, until, with a flicker 
larger than the rest, it expired. The old man, with an 
unspeakable sense of relief at the failure of the talis¬ 
man, crept back to his bed, and a minute or two after¬ 
ward the old woman came silently and apathetically be¬ 
side him. 

Neither spoke, but lay silently listening to the ticking 
of the clock. A stair creaked, and a squeaky mouse scur¬ 
ried noisily through the wall. The darkness was oppres¬ 
sive, and after lying for some time screwing up his cour¬ 
age, he took the box of matches, and striking one, went 
downstairs for a candle. 

At the foot of the stairs the match went out, and he 
paused to strike another; and at the same moment a 
knock, so quiet and stealthy as to be scarcely audible, 
sounded on the front door. 

The matches fell from his hand and spilled in the 
passage. He stood motionless, his breath suspended until 
the knock was repeated. Then he turned and fled swiftly 
back to his room, and closed the door behind him. A 
third knock sounded through the house. 

“What’s that?” cried the old woman, starting up. 

“A rat/’ said the old man in shaking tones—“a rat. 
It passed me on the stairs.” 

His wife sat up in bed listening. A loud knock re¬ 
sounded through the house. 

“It’s Herbert!” she screamed. “It’s Herbert!” 

She ran to the door, but her husband was before her, 
and catching her by the arm, held her tightly. 

“What are you going to do?” he whispered hoarsely. 

“It’s my boy; it’s Herbert!” she cried, struggling me- 
324 


THE MONKEY’S PAW 

chanically. “I forgot it was two miles away. What 
are you holding me for? Let go. I must open the door.” 

“For God’s sake don’t let it in,” cried the old man, 
trembling. 

“You’re afraid of your own son,” she cried, struggling. 
“Let me go. I’m coming, Herbert; I’m coming.” 

There was another knock, and another. The old woman 
with a sudden wrench broke free and ran from the room. 
Her husband followed to the landing, and called after 
her appealingly as she hurried downstairs. He heard the 
chain rattle back and the bottom bolt drawn slowly and 
stiffly from the socket. Then the old woman’s voice, 
strained and panting. 

“The bolt,” she cried loudly. “Come down. I can’t 
reach it.” 

But her husband was on his hands and knees groping 
wildly on the floor in search of the paw. If he could 
only find it before the thing outside got in. A perfect 
fusillade of knocks reverberated through the house, and 
he heard the scraping of a chair as his wife put it down 
in the passage against the door. He heard the creaking 
of the bolt as it came slowly back and at the same mo¬ 
ment he found the monkey’s paw, and frantically breathed 
his third and last wish. 

The knocking ceased suddenly, although the echoes 
of it were still in the house. He heard the chair drawn 
back, and the door opened. A cold wind rushed up the 
staircase, and a long loud wail of disappointment and 
misery from his wife gave him courage to run down to 
her side, and then to the gate beyond. The street lamp 
flickering opposite shone on a quiet and deserted road. 


325 


THE CREATURES 


By WALTER DE LA MARE 


I T was the ebbing light of evening that recalled me 
out of my story to a consciousness of my where¬ 
abouts. I dropped the squat little red book to my 
knee and glanced out of the narrow and begrimed oblong 
window. We were skirting the eastern coast of cliffs, 
to the very edge of which a ploughman, stumbling along 
behind his two great horses, was driving the last of his 
dark furrows. In a cleft far down between the rocks 
a cold and idle sea was soundlessly laying its frigid gar¬ 
lands of foam. I stared over the flat stretch of waters, 
then turned my head, and looked with a kind of sudden¬ 
ness into the face of my one fellow-traveller. 

He had entered the carriage, all but unheeded, yet not 
altogether unresented, at the last country station. His 
features were a little obscure in the fading daylight that 
hung between our four narrow walls, but apparently his 
eyes had been fixed on my face for some little time. 

He narrowed his lids at this unexpected confrontation, 
jerked back his head, and cast a glance out of his mirky 
glass at the slip of greenish-bright moon that was strug¬ 
gling into its full brilliance above the dun, swelling up¬ 
lands. 

"It’s a queer experience, railway-travelling,” he began 
abruptly, in a low, almost deprecating voice, drawing his 

From The Riddle and Other Stories, by Walter de la Mare. Copy¬ 
right, 1923, by Walter de la Mare. By permission of Alfred A. 
Knopf, Inc. 


326 



THE CREATURES 


hand across his eyes. “One is cast into a passing privacy 
with a fellow-stranger and then is gone.” It was as if 
he had been patiently awaiting the attention of a chosen 
listener. 

I nodded, looking at him. “That privacy, too,” he 
ejaculated, “all that!” My eyes turned towards the win¬ 
dow again: bare, thorned, black January hedge, inhos¬ 
pitable salt coast, flat waste of northern water. Our engine 
driver promptly shut off his steam, and we slid almost 
noiselessly out of sight of sky and sea into a cutting. 

“It’s a desolate country,” I ventured to remark. 

“Oh, yes, ‘desolate,’ ” he echoed a little wearily. “But 
what frets me is the way we have of arrogating to our¬ 
selves the offices of judge, jury, and counsel all in one. 
As if this earth. ... I never forget it—the futility, the 
presumption. It leads nowhere. We drive in—into all 
this silence, this—this, ‘forsakenness,’ this dream of a 
world between her lights of day and night time. We 
desecrate. Consciousness! What restless monkeys men 
are.” He recovered himself, swallowed his indignation 
with an obvious gulp. “As if,” he continued, in more 
chastened tones—“as if that other gate were not for ever 
ajar, into God knows what of peace and mystery.” He 
stooped forward, lean, darkened, objurgatory. “Don’t 
we make our world ? Isn’t that our blessed, our betrayed 
responsibility?” 

I nodded, and ensconced myself, like a dog in straw, 
in the basest of all responses to a rare, even if eccentric, 
candour—caution. 

“Well,” he continued, a little weariedly, “that’s the in¬ 
dictment. Small wonder if it will need a trumpet to 
blare us into that last ‘Family Prayers.’ Then perhaps a 
327 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


few solitaries—just a few—will creep out of their holes 
and fastnesses, and draw mercy from the merciful on the 
cities of the plain. The buried talent will shine none the 
worse for the long, long looming of its napery spun from 
dream and desire. 

“Years ago—ten, fifteen, perhaps—I chanced on the 
queerest specimen of this order of the ‘talented.’ Much 
the same country, too. This”—he swept his glance out 
towards the now invisible sea—“this is a kind of dwarf 
replica of it. More naked, smoother, more sudden and 
precipitous, more ‘forsaken,’ moody! Alone! The trees 
are shorn there, as if with monstrous shears, by the winter 
gales. The air’s salt. It is a country of stones and 
emerald, meadows, of green, meandering, aimless lanes, 
of farms set in their cliffs and valleys like rough time- 
bedimmed jewels, as if by some angel of humanity, wan¬ 
dering between dark and daybreak. 

“I was younger then—in body: the youth of the mind 
is for men of a certain age; yours, maybe, and mine. 
Even then, even at that, I was sickened of crowds, of 
that unimaginable London—swarming wilderness of man¬ 
kind in which a poor, lost, thirsty dog from Otherwhere 
tastes first the full meaning of that idle word ‘forsaken.’ 
‘Forsaken by whom?’ is the question I ask myself now. 
Visitors to my particular paradise were few then—as if, 
my dear sir, we are not all of us visitors, visitants, reve- 
nants, on earth, panting for time in which to tell and 
share our secrets, roving in search of marks that shall 
prove our quest not vain, not unprecedented, not a treach¬ 
ery. But let that be. 

“I would start off morning after morning, bread and 
cheese in pocket, from the bare old house I lodged in, 
328 


THE CREATURES 

bound for that unforeseen nowhere for which the heart, 
the fantasy, aches. Lingering hot noondays would find 
me stretched in a state half-comatose, yet vigilant, on the 
close-flowered turf of the fields or cliffs, on the sun-baked 
sands and rocks, soaking in the scene and life around me 
like some pilgrim chameleon. It was in hope to lose 
my way that I would set out. How shall a man find his 
way unless he lose it? Now and then I succeeded. That 
country is large, and its land and sea marks easily cheat 
the stranger. I was still of an age, you see, when my 
‘small door’ was ajar, and I planted a solid foot to keep 
it from shutting. But how could I know what I was 
after? One just shakes the tree of life, and the rare 
fruits come tumbling down, to rot for the most part in 
the lush grasses. 

“What was most haunting and provocative in that far¬ 
away country was its fleeting resemblance to the country 
of dream. You stand, you sit, or lie prone on its bud- 
starred heights, and look down; the green, dispersed, 
treeless landscape spreads beneath you, with its hollow 
and mounded slopes, clustering farmstead, and scatter of 
village, all motionless under the vast wash of sun and 
blue, like the drop-scene of some enchanted playhouse 
centuries old. So, too, the visionary bird-haunted head¬ 
lands, veiled faintly in a mist of unreality above their 
broken stones and the enormous saucer of the sea. 

“You cannot guess there what you may not chance 
upon, or whom. Bells clash, boom, and quarrel hollowly 
on the edge of darkness in those breakers. Voices waver 
across the fainter winds. The birds cry in a tongue un¬ 
known yet not unfamiliar. The sky is the hawks’ and 
the stars’. There one is on the edge of life, of the un- 
329 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


foreseen, whereas our cities—are not our desiccated, 
jaded minds ever continually pressing and edging further 
and further away from freedom, the vast unknown, the 
infinite presence, picking a fool’s journey from sensual 
fact to fact at the tail of that he-ass called Reason? I 
suggest that in that solitude the spirit within us realises 
that it treads the outskirts of a region long since called 
the Imagination. I assert we have strayed, and in our 
blindness abandoned-” 

My stranger paused in his frenzy, glanced out at me 
from his obscure corner as if he had intended to stun, to 
astonish me with some violent heresy. We puffed out 
slowly, laboriously from a “Halt” at which in the gather¬ 
ing dark and moonshine we had for some while been at 
a standstill. Never was wedding-guest more desperately 
at the mercy of ancient mariner. 

“Well, one day,” he went on, lifting his voice a little 
to master the resounding heart-beats of our steam-engine 
—“one late afternoon, in my goalless wanderings, I had 
climbed to the summit of a steep grass-grown cart-track, 
winding up dustily between dense, untended hedges. Even 
then I might have missed the house to which it led, for, 
hair-pin fashion, the track here abruptly turned back on 
itself, and only a far fainter footpath led on over the 
hill-crest. I might, I say, have missed the house and 
—and its inmates, if I had not heard the musical sound 
of what seemed like the twangling of a harp. This thin- 
drawn, sweet, tuneless warbling welled over the close 
green grass of the height as if out of space. Truth can¬ 
not say whether it was of that air or of my own fantasy. 
Nor did I ever discover what instrument, whether of 
330 


THE CREATURES 

man or Ariel, had released a strain so pure and yet so 
bodiless. 

“I pushed on and found myself in command of a 
gorse-strewn height, a stretch of country that lay a few 
hundred paces across the steep and sudden valley in be¬ 
tween. In a V-shaped entry to the left, and sunwards, 
lay an azure and lazy tongue of the sea. And as my eye 
slid softly thence and upwards and along the sharp, green 
horizon line against the glass-clear turquoise of space, it 
caught the flinty glitter of a square chimney. I pushed 
on, and presently found myself at the gate of a farmyard. 

“There was but one straw-mow upon its staddles. A 
few fowls were sunning themselves in their dust-baths. 
White and pied doves preened and cooed on the roof of 
an outbuilding as golden with its lichens as if the western 
sun had scattered its dust for centuries upon the large 
slate slabs. Just that life and the whispering of the 
wind: nothing more. Yet even at one swift glimpse I 
seemed to have trespassed upon a peace that had endured 
for ages; to have crossed the viewless border that di¬ 
vides time from eternity. I leaned, resting, over the gate, 
and could have remained there for hours, lapsing ever 
more profoundly into the blessed quietude that had stolen 
over my thoughts. 

“A bent-up woman appeared at the dark entry of a 
stone shed opposite to me, and, shading her eyes, paused in 
prolonged scrutiny of the stranger. At that I entered the 
gate and, explaining that I had lost my way and was 
tired and thirsty, asked for some milk. She made no re¬ 
ply, but after peering up at me, with something between 
suspicion and apprehension on her weather-beaten old 
face, led me towards the house which lay to the left on 
33i 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


the slope of the valley, hidden from me till then by plumy 
bushes of tamarisk. 

“It was a low grave house, grey-chimneyed, its stone 
walls traversed by a deep shadow cast by the declining 
sun, its dark windows rounded and uncurtained, its door 
wide open to the porch. She entered the house, and I 
paused upon the threshold. A deep unmoving quiet lay 
within, like that of water in a cave renewed by the tide. 
Above a table hung a wreath of wild flowers. To the 
right was a heavy oak settle upon the flags. A beam of 
sunlight pierced the air of the staircase from an upper 
window. 

“Presently a dark, long-faced, gaunt man appeared 
from within, contemplating me, as he advanced, out of 
eyes that seemed not so much to fix the intruder as to 
encircle his image, as the sea contains the distant speck of 
a ship on its wide, blue bosom of water. They might 
have been the eyes of the blind; the windows of a house 
in dream to which the inmate must make something of a 
pilgrimage to look out upon actuality. Then he smiled, 
and the long, dark features, melancholy yet serene, took 
light upon them, as might a bluff of rock beneath a thin 
passing wash of sunshine. With a gesture he welcomed 
me into the large dark-flagged kitchen, cool as a cellar, 
airy as a belfry, its sweet air traversed by a long oblong 
of light out of the west. 

“The wide shelves of the painted dresser were laden 
with crockery. A wreath of freshly-gathered flowers 
hung over the chimney-piece. As we entered, a twitter¬ 
ing cloud of small birds, robins, hedge-sparrows, chaf¬ 
finches fluttered up a few inches from floor and sill and 
window-seat, and once more, with tiny starry-dark eyes 
332 


THE CREATURES 

observing me, soundlessly alighted. I could hear the 
infinitesimal tic-tac of their tiny claws upon the slate. 
My gaze drifted out of the window into the garden be¬ 
yond, a cavern of clearer crystal and colour than that 
which astounded the eyes of young Aladdin. 

“Apart from the twisted garland of wild flowers, the 
shining metal of range and copper candlestick, and the 
bright-scoured crockery, there was no adornment in the 
room except a rough frame, hanging from a nail in the 
wall, and enclosing what appeared to be a faint patterned 
fragment of blue silk or fine linen. The chairs and table 
were old and heavy. A low, light warbling, an occasional 
skirr of wing, a haze-like drone of bee and fly—these 
were the only sounds that edged a quiet intensified in its 
profundity by the remote stirrings of the sea. 

“The house was stilled as by a charm, yet thought 
within me asked no questions; speculation was asleep in 
its kennel. I sat down to the milk and bread, the honey 
and fruit which the old woman laid out upon the table, 
and her master seated himself opposite to me, now in a 
low sibilant whisper—a tongue which they seemed to 
understand—addressing himself to the birds, and now, 
as if with an effort, raising those strange grey-green eyes 
of his to bestow a quiet remark upon me. He asked, 
rather in courtesy than with any active interest, a few 
questions, referring to the world, its business and trans¬ 
ports —our beautiful world—as an astronomer in the 
small hours might murmur a few words to the chance- 
sent guest of his solitude concerning the secrets of Uranus 
or Saturn. There is another, an inexplorable side to the 
moon. Yet he said enough for me to gather that he, too, 
was of that small tribe of the aloof and wild to which 
333 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


our cracked old word ‘forsaken’ might be applied, her¬ 
mits, lamas, clay-matted fakirs, and such-like; the snowy 
birds that play and cry amid mid-oceanic surges; the liv¬ 
ing of an oasis of the wilderness; which share a reality 
only distantly dreamed of by the time-driven thought- 
corroded congregations of man. 

‘‘Yet so narrow and hazardous I somehow realised was 
the brink of fellow-being (shall I call it?) which we 
shared, he and I, that again and again fantasy within me 
seemed to hover over that precipice Night knows as fear. 
It was he, it seemed, with that still embracive contempla¬ 
tion of his, with that far-away yet reassuring smile, that 
kept my poise, my balance. ‘No,’ some voice wdthin him 
seemed to utter, ‘you are safe; the bounds are fixed; 
though hallucination chaunt its decoy, you shall not irre¬ 
trievably pass over. Eat and drink, and presently return 
to life.’ And I listened, and, like that of a drowsy child 
in its cradle, my consciousness sank deeper and deeper, 
stilled, pacified into the dream which, at it seemed, this 
soundless house of stone now reared its walls. 

“I had all but finished my meal when I heard footsteps 
approaching on the flags without. The murmur of other 
voices, distinguishably shrill yet guttural even at a dis¬ 
tance, and in spite of the dense stones and beams of the 
house which had blunted their timbre, had already reached 
me. Now the feet halted. I turned my head—cautiously, 
even perhaps apprehensively—and confronted two figures 
in the doorway. 

“I cannot now guess the age of my entertainer. These 
children—for children they were in face and gesture and 
effect, though as to form and stature apparently in their 
last teens—these children were far more problematical. 
334 


THE CREATURES 

I say 'form and stature,’ yet obviously they were dwarfish. 
Their heads were sunken between their shoulders, their 
hair thick, their eyes disconcertingly deep-set. They were 
ungainly; their features peculiarly irregular, as if two 
races from the ends of the earth had in them intermingled 
their blood and strangeness; as if, rather animal and angel 
had connived in their creation. 

“But if some inward light lay on the still eyes, on the 
gaunt, sorrowful, quixotic countenance that now was fully 
and intensely bent on mine, emphatically that light was 
theirs also. He spoke to them; they answered—in Eng¬ 
lish, my own language, without a doubt: but an English 
slurred, broken, and unintelligible to me, yet clear as a 
bell, haunting, penetrating, pining as voice of nix or siren. 
My ears drank in the sound as an Arab parched with 
desert sand falls on his dried belly and gulps in mouthfuls 
of crystal water. The birds hopped nearer as if beneath 
the rod of an enchanter. A sweet continuous clamour 
arose from their small throats. The exquisite colours of 
plume and bosom burned, greened, melted in the level 
sun-ray, in the darker air beyond. 

“A kind of mournful gaiety, a lamentable felicity, 
such as rings in the cadences of an old folk-song welled 
into my heart. I was come back to the borders of Eden, 
bowed and outwearied, gazing from out of dream into 
dream, homesick, 'forsaken.’ 

“Well, years have gone by,” muttered my fellow-trav¬ 
eller deprecatingly, “but I have not forgotten that Eden’s 
primeval trees and shade. 

“They led me out, these bizarre companions, a he and 
a she, if I may put it as crudely as my apprehension of 
them put it to me then. Through a broad door they con- 
335 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


ducted me—if one who leads may be said to be conducted 
—into their garden. Garden! A full mile long, between 
undiscerned walls, it sloped and narrowed towards a sea 
at whose dark unfoamed blue, even at this distance, my 
eyes dazzled. Yet how can one call that a garden which 
reveals no ghost of a sign of human arrangement, of hu¬ 
man slavery, of spade or hoe? 

“Great boulders shouldered up, tessellated, embossed, 
powdered with a thousand various mosses and lichens, 
between a flowering greenery of weeds. Wind-stunted, 
clear-emerald, lichen-tufted trees smoothed and crisped 
the inflowing airs of the ocean with their leaves and 
spines, sibilating a thin scarce-audible music. Scanty, 
rank, and uncultivated fruits hung close their vivid-col¬ 
oured cheeks to the gnarled branches. It was the har¬ 
bourage of birds, the small embowering parlour of their 
house of life, under an evening sky, pure and lustrous as 
a water-drop. It cried, ‘Hospital’ to the wanderers of the 
universe. 

“As I look back in ever-thinning, nebulous remembrance 
on my two companions, hear their voices gutturally sweet 
and shrill, catch again their being, so to speak, I realise 
that there was a kind of Orientalism in their effect. Their 
instant courtesy was not Western, the smiles that greeted 
me, whenever I turned my head to look back at them, were 
infinitely friendly, yet infinitely remote. So ungainly, 
so far from our notions of beauty and symmetry were 
their bodies and faces, those heads thrust heavily between 
their shoulders, their disproportioned yet graceful arms 
and hands, that the children in some of our English vil¬ 
lages might be moved to stone them, while their elders 
looked on and laughed. 


336 


THE CREATURES 


“Dusk was drawing near; soon night would come. The 
colours of the sunset, sucking its extremest dye from 
every leaf and blade and petal, touched my consciousness 
even then with a vague fleeting alarm. 

“I remember I asked these strange and happy beings, 
repeating my question twice or thrice, as we neared the 
surfy entry of the valley upon whose sands a tiny stream 
emptied its fresh water—I asked them if it was they who 
had planted this multitude of flowers, many of a kind 
utterly unknown to me and alien to a country inexhaustibly 
rich. ‘We wait; we wait!’ I think they cried. And it 
was as if their cry awoke echo from the green-walled 
valleys of the mind into which I had strayed. Shall I 
confess that tears came into my eyes as I gazed hungrily 
around me on the harvest of their patience? 

“Never was actuality so close to dream. It was not 
only an unknown country, slipped in between these placid 
hills, on which I had chanced in my ramblings. I had 
entered for a few brief moments a strange region of con¬ 
sciousness. I was treading, thus accompanied, amid a 
world of welcoming and fearless life—oh, friendly to 
me!—the paths of man’s imagination, the kingdom from 
which thought and curiosity, vexed scrutiny and lust— 
a lust it may be for nothing more impious than the actual 
—had prehistorically proved the insensate means of his 
banishment. ‘Reality,’ ‘Consciousness’: had he for ‘the 
time being’ unwittingly, unhappily missed his way? 
would he be led back at length to that garden wherein 
cockatrice and basilisk bask, harmlessly, at peace? 

“I speculate now. In that queer, yes, and possibly 
sinister company, sinister pnly because it was alien to me, 
I did not speculate. In their garden, the familiar was 
337 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


become the strange—‘the strange 5 that lurks in the in¬ 
most heart, unburdens its riches in trance, flings its light 
and gilding upon love, gives heavenly savour to the in¬ 
temperate bowl of passion, and is the secret of our in¬ 
communicable pity. What is yet queerer, these things 
were evidently glad of my company. They stumped after 
me (as might yellow men after some Occidental quadruped 
never before seen) in merry collusion of nods and 
wreathed smiles at this perhaps unprecedented intrusion. 

“I stood for a moment looking out over the placid sur¬ 
face of the sea. A ship in sail hung phantom-like on the 
horizon. I pined to call my discovery to its seamen. The 
tide gushed, broke, spent itself on the bare boulders, 
I was suddenly cold and alone, and gladly turned back 
into the garden, my companions instinctively separating 
to let me pass between them. I breathed in the rare, 
almost exotic heat, the tenuous, honeyed, almond-laden 
air of its flowers and birds—gull, sheldrake, plover, wag¬ 
tail, finch, robin, which as I half-angrily, half-sadly real¬ 
ised fluttered up in momentary dismay only at my presence 
—the embodied spectre of their enemy, man. Man? 
Then who were these? . . . 

“I lost again a way lost early that morning, as I trudged 
inland at night. The dark came, warm and starry. I 
was dejected and exhausted beyond words. That night 
I slept in a barn and was awakened soon after daybreak 
by the crowing of cocks. I went out, dazed and blinking 
into the sunlight, bathed face and hands in a brook near 
by, and came to a village before a soul was stirring. So 
I sat under a thrift-cushioned, thorn-crowned wall in a 
meadow, and once more drowsed off and fell asleep. 
When again I awoke, it was ten o’clock. The church 

338 


THE CREATURES 

dock in its tower knelled out the strokes, and I went into 
an inn for food. 

“A corpulent, blonde woman, kindly and hospitable, 
with a face comfortably resembling her own sow’s, that 
yuffed and nosed in at the open door as I sat on my stool, 
served me with what I called for. I described—not 
without some vanishing shame, as if it were a treachery 
—my farm, its whereabouts. 

“Her small blue eyes ‘pigged’ at me with a fleeting ex¬ 
pression which I failed to translate. The name of the 
farm, it appeared, was Trevarras. ‘And did you see any 
of the Creatures?’ she asked me in a voice not entirely 
her own. ‘The Creatures’ ? I sat back for an instant and 
stared at her; then realised that Creature was the name 
of my host, and Maria and Christus (though here her 
dialect may have deceived me) the names of my two 
gardeners. She spun an absurd story, so far as I could 
tack it together and make it coherent. Superstitious stuff 
about this man who had wandered in upon the shocked 
and curious inhabitants of the district and made his home 
at Trevarras—a stranger and pilgrim, a ‘foreigner,’ it 
seemed, of few words, dubious manners, and both unin¬ 
formative. 

“Then there was something (she placed her two fat 
hands, one of them wedding-ringed, on the zinc of the 
bar-counter, and peered over at me, as if I were a de¬ 
lectable ‘wash’), then there was something about a woman 
‘from the sea.’ In a ‘blue gown,’ and either dumb, in¬ 
articulate, or mistress of only a foreign tongue. She 
must have lived in sin, moreover, those pig’s eyes seemed 
to yearn, since the children were ‘simple,’ ‘naturals’—as 
God intends in such matters. It was useless. One’s 
339 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


stomach may sometimes reject the cold sanative aerated 
water of ‘the next morning,’ and my ridiculous intoxica¬ 
tion had left me dry but not yet quite sober. 

“Anyhow, this she told me, that my blue woman, as 
fair as flax, had died and was buried in the neighbouring 
churchyard (the nearest to, though miles distant from 
Trevarras). She repeatedly assured me, as if I might 
otherwise doubt so sophisticated a fact, that I should find 
her grave there, her ‘stone.’ 

“So indeed I did—far away from the elect, and in a 
shade-ridden north-west corner of the sleepy, cropless 
acre: a slab, scarcely rounded, of granite, with but a name 
bitten out of the dark, rough surface, ‘Femina Creature / ” 


THE TAIPAN 

By W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM 


N O one knew better than he that he was an impor¬ 
tant person. He was number one in not the 
least important branch of the most important 
English firm in China. He had worked his way up 
through solid ability, and he looked back with a faint 
smile at the callow clerk who had come out to China 
thirty years before. When he remembered the modest 
home he had come from, a little red house in a long row 
of little red houses, in Barnes, a suburb which, aiming 
desperately at the genteel, achieves only a sordid melan¬ 
choly, and compared it with the magnificent stone man¬ 
sion, with its wide verandahs and spacious rooms, which 
was at once the office of the company and his own resi¬ 
dence, he chuckled with satisfaction. He had come a 
long way since then. He thought of the high tea to which 
he sat down when he came home from school (he was at 
St. Paul's), with his father and mother and his two sis¬ 
ters, a slice of cold meat, a great deal of bread and butter 
and plenty of milk in his tea, everybody helping himself, 
and then he thought of the state in which now he ate 
his evening meal. He always dressed, and whether he 
was alone or not he expected the three boys to wait at 
table. His number one boy knew exactly what he liked, 
and he never had to bother himself with the details of 
housekeeping; but he always had a set dinner with soup 

From On a Chinese Screen, by W. Somerset Maugham. Copyright, 
1922, by George H. Doran Company. 

341 




TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


and fish, entree, roast, sweet and savoury, so that if he 
wanted to ask anyone in at the last moment he could. 
He liked his food, and he did not see why when he was 
alone he should have less good a dinner than when he 
had a guest. 

He had indeed gone far. That was why he did not 
care to go home now; he had not been to England for 
ten years, and he took his leave in Japan or Vancouver 
where he was sure of meeting old friends from the China 
coast. He knew no one at home. His sisters had mar¬ 
ried in their own station, their husbands were clerks and 
their sons were clerks; there was nothing between him 
and them; they bored him. He satisfied the claims of 
relationship by sending them every Christmas a piece of 
fine silk, some elaborate embroidery, or a case of tea. 
He was not a mean man, and as long as his mother lived 
he had made her an allowance. But when the time came 
for him to retire he had no intention of going back to Eng¬ 
land, he had seen too many men do that and he knew how 
often it was a failure; he meant to take a house near the 
race-course in Shanghai: what with bridge and his ponies 
and gold he expected to get through the rest of his life 
very comfortably. But he had a good many years before 
he need think of retiring. In another five or six Higgins 
would be going home, and then he would take charge of 
the head office in Shanghai. Meanwhile he was very 
happy where he was; he could save money, which you 
couldn’t do in Shanghai, and have a good time into the 
bargain. This place had another advantage over Shang¬ 
hai : he was the most prominent man in the community 
and what he said went. Even the consul took care to 
keep on the right side of him. Once a consul and he had 
342 


THE TAIPAN 

been at loggerheads, and it was not he who had gone to 
the wall. The taipan thrust out his jaw pugnaciously as 
he thought of the incident. 

But he smiled, for he felt in an excellent humour. He 
was walking back to his office from a capital luncheon at 
the Hong-Kong and Shanghai Bank. They did you 
very well there. The food was first rate and there was 
plenty of liquor. He had started with a couple of cock¬ 
tails, then he had had some excellent sauterne, and he 
had finished up with two glasses of port and some fine 
old brandy. He felt good. And when he left he did a 
thing that was rare with him: he walked. His bearers 
with his chair kept a few paces behind him in case he 
felt inclined to slip into it, but he enjoyed stretching his 
legs. He did not get enough exercise these days. Now 
that he was too heavy to ride, it was difficult to get 
exercise. But if he was too heavy to ride he could still 
keep ponies, and as he strolled along in the balmy air he 
thought of the spring meeting. He had a couple of grif¬ 
fins that he had hopes of and one of the lads in his office 
had turned out a fine jockey (he must see they didn’t 
sneak him away, old Higgins in Shanghai would give a 
pot of money to get him over there) and he ought to pull 
off two or three races. He flattered himself that he had 
the finest stable in the city. He pouted his broad chest 
like a pigeon. It was a beautiful day, and it was good to 
be alive. 

He paused as he came to the cemetery. It stood there, 
neat and orderly, as an evident sign of the community’s 
opulence. He never passed the cemetery without a little 
glow of pride. He was pleased to be an Englishman. For 
the cemetery stood in a place, valueless when it was chosen, 
343 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


which with the increase of the city’s affluence was now 
worth a great deal of money. It had been suggested 
that the graves should be moved to another spot and the 
land sold for building, but the feeling of the community 
was against it. It gave the taipan a sense of satisfaction 
to think that their dead rested on the most valuable site 
on the island. It showed that there were things they 
cared for more than money. Money be blowed! When 
it came to “the things that mattered” (this was a favour¬ 
ite phrase with the taipan), well, one remembered that 
money wasn’t everything. 

And now he thought he would take a stroll through. 
He looked at the graves. They were neatly kept, and 
the pathways were free from weeds. There was a look 
of prosperity. And as he sauntered along he read the 
names on the tombstones. Here were three side by side; 
the captain, the first mate, and the second mate of the 
barque Mary Baxter, who had all perished together in 
the typhoon of 1908. He remembered it well. There 
was a little group of two missionaries, their wives and 
children, who had been massacred during the Boxer 
troubles. Shocking thing that had been! Not that he 
took much stock in missionaries; but, hang it all, one 
couldn’t have these damned Chinese massacring them. 
Then he came to a cross with a name on it he knew. 
Good chap, Edward Mulock, but he couldn’t stand his 
liquor, drank himself to death, poor devil, at twenty- 
five: the taipan had known a lot of them do that; there 
were several more neat crosses with a man’s name on them 
and the age, twenty-five, twenty-six, or twenty-seven; it 
was always the same story; they had come out to China: 
they had never seen so much money before, they were 
344 


THE TAIPAN 


good fellows, and they wanted to drink with the rest: 
they couldn’t stand it, and there they were in the ceme¬ 
tery. You had to have a strong head and a fine constitu¬ 
tion to drink drink for drink on the China coast. Of 
course it was very sad, but the taipan could hardly help 
a smile when he thought how many of those young fel¬ 
lows he had drunk underground. And there was a death 
that had been useful, a fellow in his own firm, senior to 
him and a clever chap too: if that fellow had lived he 
might not have been taipan now. Truly the ways of fate 
were inscrutable. Ah, and here was little Mrs. Turner, 
Violet Turner, she had been a pretty little thing, he had 
had quite an affair with her; he had been devilish cut up 
when she died. He looked at her age on the tombstone. 
She’d be no chicken if she were alive now. And as he 
thought of all those dead people, a sense of satisfaction 
spread through him. He had beaten them all. They 
were dead, and he was alive, and by George he’d scored 
them off. His eyes collected in one picture all those 
crowded graves and he smiled scornfully. He very nearly 
rubbed his hands. 

“No one ever thought I was a fool,” he muttered. 

He had a feeling of good-natured contempt for the 
gibbering dead. Then, as he strolled along, he came 
suddenly upon two coolies digging a grave. He was 
astonished, for he had not heard that anyone in the com¬ 
munity was dead. 

‘‘Who the devil’s that for?” he said aloud. 

The coolies did not even look at him, they went on with 
their work, standing in the grave, deep down, and they 
shovelled up heavy clods of earth. Though he had been 
so long in China he knew no Chinese, in his day it was 
345 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 


not thought necessary to learn the damned language, and 
he asked the coolies in English whose grave they were 
digging. They did not understand. They answered him 
in Chinese and he cursed them for ignorant fools. He 
knew that Mrs. Broome’s child was ailing, and it might 
have died, but he would certainly have heard of it, and 
besides that wasn’t a child’s grave, it was a man’s and a 
big man’s too. It was uncanny. He wished he hadn’t 
gone into that cemetery; he hurried out and stepped into 
his chair. His good humour had all gone and there was 
an uneasy frown on his face. The moment he got back 
to his office he called to his number two: 

“I say, Peters, who’s dead, d’you know?” 

But Peters knew nothing. The taipan was puzzled. 
He called one of the native clerks and sent him to the 
cemetery to ask the coolies. He began to sign his let¬ 
ters. The clerk came back and said the coolies had gone 
and there was no one to ask. The taipan began to feel 
vaguely annoyed: he did not like things to happen of 
which he knew nothing. His own boy would know; his 
boy always knew everything, and he sent for him; but 
the boy had heard of no death in the community. 

“I knew no one was dead,” said the taipan irritably. 
“But what’s the grave for?” 

He told the boy to go to the overseer of the cemetery 
and find out what the devil he had dug a grave for when 
no one was dead. 

“Let me have a whisky and soda before you go,” he 
added, as the boy was leaving the room. 

He did not know why the sight of the grave had made 
him uncomfortable. But he tried to put it out of his 
mind. He felt better when he had drunk the whisky, 

346 


THE TAIPAN 

and he finished his work. He went upstairs and turned 
over the pages of Punch. In a few minutes he would go 
to the club and play a rubber or two of bridge before 
dinner. But it would ease his mind to hear what his 
boy had to say, and he waited for his return. In a 
little while the boy came back, and he brought the over¬ 
seer with him. 

“What are you having a grave dug for?” he asked the 
overseer point blank. “Nobody’s dead.” 

“I no dig glave,” said the man. 

“What the devil do you mean by that? There were 
two coolies digging a grave this afternoon.” 

The two Chinese looked at one another. Then the boy 
said they had been to the cemetery together. There was 
no new grave there. 

The taipan only just stopped himself from speaking. 

“But damn it all, I saw it myself,” were the words on 
the tip of his tongue. 

But he did not say them. He grew very red as he 
choked them down. The two Chinese looked at him with 
their steady eyes. For a moment his breath failed him. 

“All right. Get out,” he gasped. 

But as soon as they were gone he shouted for the boy 
again, and when he came, maddeningly impassive, he told 
him to bring some whisky. He rubbed his sweating face 
with a handkerchief. His hand trembled when he lifted 
the glass to his lips. They could say what they liked, 
but he had seen the grave. Why, he could hear still the 
dull thud as the coolies threw the spadefuls of earth on 
the ground above them. What did it mean? He could 
feel his heart beating. He felt strangely ill at ease. But 
he pulled himself together. It was all nonsense. If there 
347 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 

was no grave there it must have been an hallucination. 
The best thing he could do was to go to the club, and if 
he ran across the doctor, he would ask him to give him a 
look over. 

Everyone in the club looked just the same as ever. He 
did not know why he should have expected them to look 
different. It was a comfort. These men, living for many 
years with one another lives that were methodically regu¬ 
lated, had acquired a number of little idiosyncrasies— 
one of them hummed incessantly while he played bridge, 
another insisted on drinking beer through a straw—and 
these tricks which had so often irritated the taipan now 
gave him a sense of security. He needed it, for he could 
not get out of his head that strange sight he had seen; 
he played bridge very badly; his partner was censorious, 
and the taipan lost his temper. He thought the men were 
looking at him oddly. He wondered what they saw in 
him that was unaccustomed. 

Suddenly he felt he could not bear to stay in the club 
any longer. As he went out he saw the doctor reading 
The Times in the reading-room, but he could not bring 
himself to speak to him. He wanted to see for himself 
whether that grave was really there, and, stepping into his 
chair he told his bearers to take him to the cemetery. 
You couldn’t have an hallucination twice, could you ? And 
besides, he would take the overseer in with him, and if 
the grave was not there, he wouldn’t see it, and if it was 
he’d give the overseer the soundest thrashing he’d ever 
had. But the overseer was nowhere to be found. He 
had gone out and taken the keys with him. When the 
taipan found he could not get into the cemetery, he felt 
suddenly exhausted. He got back into his chair and told 
348 


THE TAIPAN 

his bearers to take him home. He would lie down for 
half an hour before dinner. He was tired out. That 
was it. He had heard that people had hallucinations 
when they were tired. When his boy came in to put out 
his clothes for dinner, it was only by an effort of will that 
he got up. He had a strong inclination not to dress that 
evening, but he resisted it: he made it a rule to dress, he 
had dressed every evening for twenty years, and it would 
never do to break his rule. But he ordered a bottle of 
champagne with his dinner, and that made him feel more 
comfortable. Afterwards he told the boy to bring him 
the best brandy. When he had drunk a couple of glasses 
of this he felt himself again. Hallucinations be damned! 
He went to the billiard room and practised a few difficult 
shots. There could not be much the matter with him 
when his eye was so sure. When he went to bed he sank 
immediately into a sound sleep. 

But suddenly he awoke. He had dreamed of that open 
grave and the coolies digging leisurely. He was sure 
he had seen them. It was absurd to say it was an halluci¬ 
nation when he had seen them with his own eyes. Then 
he heard the rattle of the night watchman going his 
rounds. It broke upon the stillness of the night so harshly 
that it made him jump out of his skin. And then terror 
seized him. He felt a horror of the winding multitudinous 
streets of the Chinese city, and there was something 
ghastly and terrible in the convoluted roofs of the temples 
with their devils grimacing and tortured. He loathed the 
smells that assaulted his nostrils. And the people. Those 
myriads of blue clad coolies, and the beggars in their 
filthy rags, and the merchants and the magistrates, sleek, 
smiling, and inscrutable, in their long black gowns. They 
349 


TWENTY-THREE STORIES 

seemed to press upon him with menace. He hated the 
country. China! Why had he ever come? He was 
panic-stricken now. He must get out. He would not 
stay another year, another month. What did he care 
about Shanghai? 

“Oh, my God!” he cried, “if I were only safely back in 
England!” 

He wanted to go home. If he had to die, he wanted 
to die in England. He could not bear to be buried among 
all these yellow men, with their slanting eyes and their 
grinning faces. He wanted to be buried at home, not in 
that grave he had seen that day. He could never rest 
there. Never. What did it matter what people thought? 
Let them think what they liked. The only thing that 
mattered was to get away while he had the chance. 

He got out of bed and wrote to the head of the firm 
and said he had discovered he was dangerously ill. He 
must be replaced. He could not stay longer than was 
absolutely necessary. He must go home at once. 

They found the letter in the morning clenched in the 
taipan’s hand. He had slipped down between the desk 
and the chair. He was stone dead. 

0 ) 


THE END 













J. 














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